


Rain and Darkness Too

by orphan_account



Series: I'll Get By [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:16:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2317178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-TWS: Steve talks and Bucky listens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Emergency

The new facility in Manhattan isn't SHIELD. It isn't anything yet, really – it's smaller, only staffed by people Fury trusts. It's not flashy. Most of it is underground, figuratively and literally. Steve knows everyone, from the doctors to the technicians to the cleaning staff. Fury claims that they're dedicated, now, to transparency among the ranks. And still Steve didn't know about the containment and observation room where they put Bucky.  
  
"I would have told you if you'd asked," Fury says with a shrug. "I wasn't hiding it, you just didn't notice."  
  
They shaved Bucky's head when Steve brought him in, stripped him of all the trappings of the Winter Soldier, including the arm no matter how much Steve protested. He rejected the sedative again and again and halfway woke up twenty or thirty times before Banner and his staff got the dosage right, and after that he was under for a week while Tony repaired the arm. Whatever he did to it, it came back shiny, with a little red and gold striped star on it. Steve supposes Tony really can't help himself. There are probably a hundred apps built into the thing; Tony tipped Steve a salute on the way out and said something about an inspector gadget.  
  
Steve watched it all, wanting to be in the containment room but contenting himself with being on the other side of the glass the whole time. He didn't think he was punishing himself, but he had to wonder when Sam told him to stop being a martyr and go take a nap. It was just – he could envision, clear as day, Bucky waking up, taking down everyone in the room, and running off into the night before Steve could even talk to him again. And Steve needs to talk to him. He dreams about their conversations, about Bucky sitting still and silent, listening, absorbing all of Steve's...whatever Steve has to offer him. He dreams about a giant splinter in Bucky's brain, and Steve's voice removing it.  
  
When Natasha handed him Bucky's file, she had to help him decipher the meaning behind some of the triggers. "Most of these are pretty standard," she said. "Kill order, kill order, protection order – there are about twenty people he would be required to protect at all costs – kill order, kill order. Wow. Kill order. That's high up."  
  
"I didn't even know that one was an assassination," Steve said, looking over her shoulder.  
  
"Oh," she said, pointing to one section of the report. "I know this training. This is easy, actually – you get the subject to believe all things are machines. Equally worthless."  
  
"So they're easier to kill?" he asked. "I guess that makes a twisted sort of sense."  
  
"Not just other people, everything," she said. "If everything is a _thing_ , including yourself, nothing has any value. Flowers, trees, dogs, humans, everything is the same as a glass bottle you shoot with your slingshot when you're a kid. You don't care about the glass bottle. You don't even clean it up when you're done. It's nothing, and you're nothing. You're the glass bottle too."  
  
*  
  
Since Bucky woke up from sedation, he hasn't talked. No amount of questioning from the doctors, or even from Fury himself, will get him to say a word. He's not unresponsive, however; Steve watches him every day, and he can almost always tell how Bucky's reacting, if not what he's thinking. Whatever happened to him between the battle on the Potomac and today, he's aware that he's not just a thing anymore. He's not Bucky – he doesn't move like Bucky, doesn't look at things like Bucky did. Before the war, he strolled when he walked, hipshot like a tomcat, and during the war he moved like he was suspicious, like any soldier would, with his left shoulder forward to shield himself or to bear his rifle. All that is gone, but he's not the Winter Soldier anymore, either. He doesn't look like a dead man who's been reanimated. He just looks like a stranger.  
  
If food is set before him, he eats it, and if not, he doesn't ask for it. Nothing like the Bucky Steve knew, who enjoyed food with the same exuberance he enjoyed everything else. He was forever prowling around and finding little dive bars nobody else knew about, where the food was cheap and good. When his meal was good, he'd lick his fingers with a wink until Steve threw a napkin at him. He loved to take Steve out and feed him.  
  
"Don't do anything too fancy, okay?" Steve tells the cooking staff after a week. "Give him a Reuben and a Coca Cola. That's his favorite."  
  
After the orderly brings Bucky the sandwich and soda, he looks at it for a long time, expressionless. He eats it tentatively, and when he's finished, instead of watching television and doing pushups as he's done for the last twenty days, he goes to his bed and stays there for several hours. Steve watches the line of his back, the rise and fall of his breath, wishing he could disobey Fury and go into the room, knowing it's best if he doesn't.  
  
He moves into the facility. Since he refuses to leave, and didn't renew his apartment lease in DC, Fury lets him stay with bad grace. He sets up a cot in the corner of the observation room, and only goes outside to run in the mornings. Sam, who has already settled in, found a place Sunnyside, and started working with the local VA chapter, sometimes runs with him. Fury wants to recruit him, but after his most recent experience with government agencies, Sam's a little reluctant.  
  
"Anyone ever tell you you're obsessive?" Sam asks one morning after his fifth lap, Steve's eighth.  
  
"Dedicated," Steve says. "Obsession is a sickness."  
  
"Yeah, you are a little sick, when it comes to him." Sam sprints for thirty seconds, then slows again, letting Steve pass. When they're finished, he leans against the fence, panting. "You need to get out of that building, is all I'm saying."  
  
"Put yourself in my place," Steve says. "Think about how far you'd go to help."  
  
"If he shot me three times, it wouldn't be very far," Sam says, "like a couple inches."  
  
Steve shakes his head. "He's everything to me. My friend, my family, my past, my whole life."  
  
"That's intense." But Sam, perhaps thinking of his lost wingman, gives him a slap on the back. "I get it, man, I get it."  
  
Natasha's in and out. He thinks she's been in the Ukraine, but given how often he sees Clint hanging around on the edges of the facility, he'd say she's been in Manhattan more than she'll admit. She looks in on Bucky a few times, but doesn't seem to want to have much to do with him.  
  
"I've done this," she says, waving a hand at the glass separating the observers from the observed. "It wasn't pretty."  
  
"You've done – what, being deprogrammed?" he asks. He's always amazed at the things she reveals to him. It seems impossible that she's only thirty. Sometimes he thinks she's older than he is.  
  
"Something like that." Her eyebrows are knit together, and she won't look at him. "He'll come back to you. But you might not want him to, after he remembers who he is and everything he's done. He might want you to kill him."  
  
"Did you have someone to help you?" She shakes her head. "Well, he does. I'm going to help him through this."  
  
She turns from the glass, smirking, but it's more affectionate than not. "I guess if anyone can heal him with the power of love, it's you. Just don't be surprised if he can't get past it."  
  
Every day is almost exactly the same. He wakes up, runs, eats breakfast, talks to the techs and the orderlies and the psychiatrists, ignores Fury, watches Bucky. Watches Bucky, all day, every day. Sometimes he plays cards with the techs. Sometimes he watches whatever television show Bucky is watching – National Geographic, or the History Channel, the occasional baseball game. Bucky gets fidgety when he watches the Yankees, which Steve thinks is a good sign.  
  
*  
  
One day, things are different. When he comes back from his run, there are twenty more people in the observation room than Steve's used to, and they all look run ragged. Fury is staring through the glass into Bucky's room, disgruntled.  
  
"What's going on?" Steve asks, putting his hand to the glass.  
  
"One of the orderlies told Sergeant Barnes it was the Fourth of July," Fury says drily. "He's gonna piss himself every time he sees the Stars and Stripes from now on."  
  
Bucky is tucked into the darkest corner of the room, making himself as small as he can. It's not very dark and he's not small. Steve can see his bare feet and the hems of his black sweatpants, the glint of metal from his arm. He likes his back to the wall. Steve knows that feeling.  
  
"Let me talk to him, will you?" Steve says. The tech, Rodriguez, hands him a headset, but Fury shakes his head, and Rodriguez slowly pulls back. "Come on, he knows me."  
  
"His last mission was to kill you, and for all we know, he's still on that mission," Fury says. "You wanna freak out the brainwashed hitman, Cap? He didn't try to hurt anyone until they said it was the Fourth. That got any special significance for you?"  
  
"He came to me, I brought him in. He has to wonder where I am," Steve tells him. He's played by the rules so far, but now – he's not sure how he knows that this will help, but he does. This is the right time. "It has to happen sometime. I know I can calm him down."  
  
Fury is silent for a long time, but he doesn't say no. "A few words. That's it. Test him out."  
  
He grabs the headset from Rodriguez and puts it on, lets them tap into the feed in Bucky's room. Once he's in, he chokes up, doesn't know what to say at first. His palms are sweaty, and he wipes them on his running pants. Abruptly, he thinks of finding Bucky in the HYDRA factory in Austria. It was a revelation, like coming back to life – more so than actually coming back to life, now that he thinks about it.  
  
"Bucky," he says. It comes out soft, almost awestruck. He puts his hand to the glass again, even though it's a little silly. It just makes him feel like he's closer.  
  
Bucky's head snaps to the side, and Steve regrets his decision for a moment – remembers Natasha saying _You're all over this file, Steve. Your name is everywhere_.  
  
"Hey, buddy, it's Steve," he says. "I know you don't remember everything right now, but you remember a little, don't you? I think..." He pauses, because he hasn't said anything about this even to Sam. "I think it was you who pulled me out of the river, wasn't it? I remember you doing that, kinda." He clears his throat. "Anyway. I just wanted to say..."  
  
Bucky doesn't move, but he's listening, Steve can tell.  
  
"I just wanted to say..." His eyes sting suddenly, making him blink hard, and his voice wobbles even as he laughs a little. "Hi."  
  
The rest of the observation room is quiet, listening. He doesn't care. "I wanted to say hi," he says again. "You don't have to say anything. I'm just glad you're alive. It's my birthday, you know? And getting to talk to you, this is the best – the best present."  
  
Bucky doesn't speak, but he also doesn't touch the robot who comes in to give him his next round of shots, Fury having decided a mechanical staff is best for the foreseeable future. Steve has a vision of Tony with a remote control in another room. When the robot pinches Bucky's arm, Steve is sure of it.  
  
*  
  
After that, he's allowed to talk to Bucky every day. He doesn't want to overdo it, although if he could, he'd talk day and night. He tells Bucky stories, starting with the earliest things he can remember: being sick on the schoolyard, so much smaller than the other boys but trying to keep up when they played stickball, even when they pushed him out of the game. There's a particularly bad asthma attack he remembers. All the boys were laughing and kicking him, and he was facedown in the dirt, inhaling it, crying in fear because he was sure this time he would actually suffocate.  
  
"But you got them to back off," he says. "They beat the stuffing out of you later, but you got me up and you took me home. I was mad because I wanted to be able to do it on my own. I think I told you to leave me alone. But you didn't."  
  
He can clearly remember pushing Bucky's hands off him and wheezing out, "I don't need anyone's help. Thank you," and shutting the door right in his face. But the next day, Bucky was there to walk with him to school, and he never left Steve's side. He has no memories, from five to twenty-five, that don't involve Bucky.  
  
Bucky continues to say nothing, but he listens intently, not moving, not even eating when his food arrives while Steve is talking. In the mornings, when Steve comes back from his run, Bucky's already awake and exercising. He doesn't sleep much. He pretends to, but the monitors indicate that he sleeps only three or four hours a day, usually between sundown and midnight. Steve's adjusted to his schedule.  
  
"He's been restless," Rodriguez tells Steve. "I think he's waiting for you."  
  
Steve takes the headset. Bucky looks up at the sound of his voice, and moves to the glass. Usually he stays far away from it, although he stares like he's marking every single person behind it. The techs complain that it's creepy, but Steve finds it kind of comforting to look up and see Bucky watching him, or seeming to. Bucky leans his forehead against the glass, eyes closed. He's right in front of Steve, who reaches out to touch without thinking about it before pulling away, frustrated by the barrier.   
  
*  
  
"I wasn't around, you know." It's a Friday in early August. He's in a strange mood. He dreamed about that moment just before Bucky fell, the way he's dreamed about it so many times, where he just stretches a little farther, moves a little faster, catches Bucky's hand before the railing breaks. Part of him always knows, though. He always wakes up when the light glares off the mountain snow and he has to turn away.

Bucky seems to have caught his mood. At first he listened to Steve talk about what it was going to be like when he was healthy again without looking at the glass at all, just wandering around the room touching things before he sat down at the table. There was something clumsy and unpracticed and very young in his movements. For some reason Steve's reassurances stuck in his throat and he found himself wanting to give Bucky – what? An explanation? An excuse, maybe.

"I don't know if they told you that," Steve continues. "My plane went down and I was stuck in the ice. Right after, uh, after you fell. Just woke up a few years ago. If I'd been awake – if I'd even caught a whisper of a rumor you were still alive – I'd have come after you. No power on earth could have stopped me. I'd have done anything."  
  
The room has one table, one bed (no frame, just a single mattress resting on a ledge), one couch in front of a television set far into the wall. No windows, no utensils, everything bolted down and made of soft material. The only weapon in the room is Bucky, who sits at the table with his legs drawn up, chin resting on his knees. For the first time, Steve could swear it's all Bucky in there because he's crying – under all his bluff and swagger, Bucky always cried easy. When he got tired and angry he'd cuss and throw something and cry and then get angrier because of it, scrubbing his face with his palms like he was trying to erase the evidence. Steve would pet him and at first Bucky would protest that there was nothing wrong, that he wasn't a little kid and he didn't need to be comforted, but Steve would shush him, call him an idiot, and eventually Bucky would allow himself to be soothed. Those were the times it was most dangerous because Bucky wasn't trying to charm or tease, and Steve wanted to kiss the pout right out of his lower lip, kiss his eyelids, his flushed, damp face. It's no different now – except Steve can't touch him. The constant ache burns so brightly through his entire body that he's bowled over by it suddenly; Bucky is twenty feet away and yet farther than the moon.  
  
"I missed you." It's something he's avoided saying, preferring to keep things light, but it needs to be said. He feels scraped raw, as if something with knives is being dragged out of him. "God, I've missed you every second like I was...like I was starving to death."  
  
Bucky puts his face down on his knees, sweeping one arm out so all the food on the table crashes to the floor. There's no force behind it; he does it miserably, like he's giving into something. His back heaves, and truth be told, Steve is worse off than Bucky is, hands shaking so hard he can hardly run one of them through his hair. Suddenly he sits up straight and looks around, remembering he's got three technicians in there with him. He forgets they're not alone sometimes. The techs all watch him sadly, and he wipes his nose.  
  
"Don't be upset, Buck," he says, voice cracking. "Come on, don't – look, I'm alive, and you're alive. That's all that matters. When you're better, you'll get out of here and I'll take you home. Just you and me."  
  
Bucky doesn't move. He stays there a long time, even when the robot orderly comes in to clean up the mess.  
  
*  
  
The next day, Bucky studiously doesn't listen to Steve. He stays in bed, watches television, eats, exercises with his back to the glass.  
  
Steve gives up after the seventy-fifth squat thrust. "Fine," he says exasperatedly. "I could never get anything through your big fat head anyway."  
  
He throws down the headset and stands up, stalking over to the corner of the observation room where he sleeps, thinking it might be time to get out and do some serious punching bag work because he's about to throw something a lot bigger than the headset.  
  
"Cap," Rodriguez says.  
  
He turns and there's Bucky at the glass, tapping on it. His hair, still short but growing out, is damp with sweat and sticking to his forehead. Most of him is wet, actually. Steve stares far too long but he can't help it. Bucky's bigger than Steve remembers him being – bigger in the shoulders, in the thighs – and looks harder around the eyes, but nothing like before. Steve picks up the headset again.  
  
"What, I lose my temper and now you decide you want to hear my voice?" he asks. Bucky looks down at the floor and grins, shrugging. It's a shadow of his old sunny smile, but then, Steve thinks, the war had already killed that smile, killed that happy boy. This is Sergeant Barnes, Howling Commando. But they're all Bucky, all these men who still know Steve Rogers somewhere, and that's all that matters to him.  
  
*  
  
It's two weeks before anything changes. Nothing in particular causes it; he's only worked his way through high school stories and into art school, when they lived together in Brooklyn. That was when Bucky started trying to get him to go out with girls in earnest. He was dead set on Steve losing his virginity, and Steve was dead set on not being embarrassed by the girls Bucky set him up with. They both lost spectacularly, Steve thinks, still a virgin, and forever embarrassed by dating, male or female. The techs have a pretty good idea now of how pathetic his life was before the serum. He hopes they don't decide someday to release a tell-all book. _Steve Rogers, Virgin Asthmatic: a Twenty-First Century Retrospective_. Not that he cares so much about the virgin part; other people have always cared about it, not him. Bucky was practically obsessed with it. _It's just wrong_ , he'd say, more upset than he ever got about anything else, _it's wrong they don't know how great you are. Now come out with us, these girls are gonna love you._  
  
"We got drunk on the roof that one time, you remember?" Steve says. "Well, I got drunk. I had maybe three sips of that turpentine you kept in your flask. We were up there with two girls, Patty and Nancy I think."  
  
It was one of those relentless, clear nights where you could see the stars perfectly but only if you were willing to brave the wind. It was too hard for his thin jacket and thin lungs, but he was warm from the alcohol. The girls were laughing, dancing a little around Bucky. They weren't paying attention to Steve, and he was glad; he was watching Bucky too. He always watched Bucky, until Peggy came along.  
  
"I took that fourth sip," he says, "and all of a sudden –"  
  
"You threw up all over Nancy," Bucky says.  
  
All the techs in the sleepy room bolt upright, feet coming off the consoles, empty water bottles bouncing onto the floor. Steve mutes the comm for a second and turns to Rodriguez.  
  
"He talked!" he shouts. "You heard that, right?"  
  
Rodriguez and Foster, one of the semi-regular night techs, hold up their hands for victory. The third, Parker, is calling Fury.  
  
Steve fumbles for the mute button and says, trying to tamp down his excitement, "Yeah. Yeah, I did. She was so mad, she wouldn't even let you take her home. But you weren't upset. You thought it was funny."  
  
Bucky's sitting at the table again, feet up. He looks relaxed, cocky, chin tipped up. "It _was_ funny," he says. "You had four hot dogs right before we went up there."  
  
"And a cherry snow-cone. She looked like something you cooked when I was done with her," Steve says, and Parker signals to him that Fury is on his way.  
  
*  
  
Bucky's primary doctor is Dr. Shannen, a tiny, excitable British woman who tends to smack his arm as she's pointing out improvements or new discoveries in Bucky's condition. Over the past few months he's sat in on more than a few consults, but they all focused on the metal arm or Bucky's stamina. He hasn't gotten to talk to anyone about what's going on in Bucky's head, no matter how much he bothers Fury about it. _The less you know, the more effective you'll be in his recovery_ , Fury says. But now he's letting Steve in, and Dr. Shannen tells him why straight away.  
  
"This was taken from one of our operatives, who was captured and brainwashed for nearly a year," she says. She holds up a scan of a brain, seen from above. It looks unhealthy, somehow. The edges are blue, while most of the brain itself is gray. It's dotted with small red marks along the right side. "These, here – these are trigger points. It took us a year to successfully undo them all, and she still has problems."  
  
She puts up another picture. Steve doesn't need to see the _Barnes, James Buchanan_ in the corner to know whose brain this is. There are huge red blotches all over it. "These," she says, pointing to the blotches, "are clusters of trigger points. They, his torturers, buried them within one another like nesting dolls. On top of that, his captors appear to have used some kind of electroshock equipment on him, multiple times."  
  
Steve scrubs his hands over his face. He's read Bucky's file, cover to cover, enough to memorize it, but he still can't take knowing. "All right," he says. "All right. How bad is it?"  
  
She pulls out a third picture. Still Bucky's, but taken – he checks the date – this morning. The clusters, every one of them, are smaller, like red tides receding. "This has happened only since you've been talking to him," she says, slapping his arm and pointing excitedly to the smaller red blotches. "He was healing already, probably because he was given some form of the same serum you were injected with, Captain Rogers. But since July, the healing has accelerated like nothing I could have ever imagined. Your presence seems to enhance his progress."  
  
"The triggers are healing?" he asks. "Do triggers – heal?"  
  
"As his brain heals from the electroshock and he recovers his memories, the triggers will become less and less effective, yes," she says. "If he had not been given some kind of enhancement, he would be nearly impossible to treat, after seventy years of cryogenic freezing broken only by torture and brainwashing. But he's different now. Like you. He must have rejected these triggers many times for HYDRA to keep working on him as they did."  
  
"What can I do?" Steve asks. "How can I fix it?"  
  
"Be with him as much as possible," she says. "We can undo what was done to him on the neurological level, but on the psychological, we can only help him to process the trauma and understand the triggers themselves as he remembers them. Our team's main concern is that he doesn't begin to think of the Winter Soldier as a separate identity. He has to accept that he's not at fault, but also that he and the Winter Soldier are the same man. As he recovers, that will be very difficult."  
  
"That's a tall order." Steve thinks of Banner's "other guy," and wonders how he copes with it.  
  
When Dr. Shannen leaves, Fury stays in the room, arms folded over his chest. "Don't even think about saying I told you s–"  
  
"Let me see him," Steve says. "Face to face."  
  
"That's worse than I told you so." Fury's good eye isn't visible, but Steve has the feeling he's being glared at with it nonetheless. "Did you hear what she just said about the nesting dolls?"  
  
"I'm making him better," Steve says. His voice breaks, and he hopes Fury doesn't call him on it. "Nick. Please. I need to look at him and know he's looking back at me."  
  
Fury walks out of the room, and Steve thinks there's no way, it'll be months before he's allowed to see Bucky – and he can't say he'd honestly disagree. There's so much damage there that anything could set him back.  
  
"All right," Fury says when he pauses at the door, and Steve lets out a sound that might, embarrassingly, be called a sob. "Today. On one condition."  
  
Steve doesn't say 'anything,' even though he wants to.  
  
"You take him down if he even looks at you funny."  
  
He knows there will be ten agents outside the door as backup, but Fury needs to know he's capable of keeping Bucky under control. "I won't hurt him," he says finally. "But I can handle him."  
  
"Yeah, you think you can," Fury says. "You almost let him kill you before."  
  
He has to admit this is true, and that he could harm the Winter Soldier, but he could never do the same to Bucky.  
  
*  
  
He'll never tell anyone, but he changes his clothes in the third floor locker room three times before he goes in to see Bucky. The first thing that pops into his mind is his Captain America uniform, but he doesn't even have that anymore – he had to peel it off himself in blood-stained sheets and then pay to have it repaired before he returned it to the Smithsonian – and anyway he's not about to trigger Bucky into killing everyone in the building. No, he decides, better to go with nice pants and a sweater. But the second he puts them on they come off again, because he feels ridiculous dressing up. In the end, he goes with jeans and a t-shirt and, at the last moment, a hooded sweatshirt that Natasha gave him. It makes him look less gigantic, she told him, and kinda hot. He wants to be unthreatening.  
  
And...hot.  
  
The door to Bucky's room slides open before he's quite ready to go in, and he stops with his hand on the frame. It doesn't feel right; they shouldn't be meeting again in what amounts to an underground psychiatric ward. They should see each other like old friends do, in a cafe or at home, greeting each other with a big hug and a beer. Not for the first time, he wonders how they got here, two ordinary kids from Brooklyn. He wonders what he would even tell his younger self, Bucky's younger self, if he could go back and warn them. Could they ever have ended up old men together after the war, maybe working in a factory, retiring and playing with their grandkids together? No, he thinks. With him and Bucky, it was always going to be like this.  
  
The room is so bright. Bucky stands up and waits in the middle of the room, arms crossed over his chest. He's still so – it always felt strange, thinking this about a man, about his best friend, but there isn't a better word for it – so beautiful. There was always something about him that was luminous. Even now, looking faintly ill from lack of sunlight, diminished somehow in his standard issue black t-shirt and black sweatpants, metal arm big and strange and uncanny, he glows. Is it only Steve who can see it? There's still that dark hair, clear blue eyes, long eyelashes, the soft, full, red mouth. Steve teased him mercilessly for being so pretty, especially when he was still a gawky teenager.  
  
"Pretty, huh?" Bucky would say, pretending not to preen, pretending to look bashful so Steve would compliment him some more.  
  
"Yeah," Steve would reply, "kinda girly, even," and Bucky would tussle with him, very gently, just grabbing him around the neck and shaking him like one puppy wrestling with a much smaller one.  
  
Bucky looks Steve up and down, totally impassive. His stance isn't as relaxed as he pretended to be earlier, halfway between combative and unconcerned. And his eyes – there's a strange shuttering effect happening, something that vacillates between coldness and warmth. Steve's hands twitch with the effort not to touch him; he has to actually shove them in the pockets of his hoodie. Bucky doesn't circle him or anything that obvious, but Steve feels like he's being watched from all angles nonetheless.  
  
"How do I know," Bucky says, "that you're really Steve Rogers?"  
  
Steve blows a breath out and looks at the floor. "You want some kind of code word?"  
  
He's smiling a little. "Nah," he says. "Just – give me something only Steve Rogers could ever know."  
  
"All right," Steve says, looking up again, directly into Bucky's eyes. "The last words you said to me were _I had him on the ropes_."  
  
And like an idiot, he's crying suddenly – not an outburst, nothing as dramatic as that, there's just an abrupt clench in his throat and his eyes are wet.  
  
"Sorry," he says. He pinches the bridge of his nose to force it down and away. "I've never told that to anyone."  
  
He's having trouble breathing. The room, scrubbed white and bright as it is, seems to be tipping sideways. Bucky uncrosses his arms and takes an uncertain step toward him, and Steve tries to stand up straight and look at him because this is Bucky, and he's finally got eyes on him, he's seeing Bucky for the first time and he could touch him if he wanted, but the light is too bright. He winces and the room tilts even harder.  
  
"Captain Rogers, your heart rate is elevating," Rodriguez says sharply in his ear.  
  
"Yeah, no kidding," he pants. God, this is a familiar feeling. It hasn't happened since 1943, but he knows this, the way his lungs seem to be shrinking into tiny points. A line of sweat slides clammily down his back.  
  
"Steve?" Bucky asks softly, putting a hand on his shoulder. In the back of his mind, there's a little flare of pleasure at Bucky saying his name, at the solid, real pressure of his fingers after dreaming about them for so long. But the pleasure sticks in the pigsty mud of his first asthma attack in seventy years. He's wondered, of course, if it could come back, if the serum would ever start to degenerate, if someday he would end up five-four and a hundred pounds again, thin lungs, no immune system. This is not the way he thought it would start, though.  
  
Bucky hustles him over to the table and he sits down, trying not to compress his diaphragm and constrict his breathing any further. "He needs a shot!" Bucky shouts at the glass, crouching with his arm around Steve.  
  
"It's a panic attack, not asthma," Rodriguez says in Steve's ear and through the comm.  
  
"A what?" Bucky's hand tightens on his shoulder, like he's ready to fight whatever's dared invade Steve's body, and that's familiar too.  
  
"Get out of there now, Captain," Fury says. The door opens again and four guards step in to escort him out of the room. Bucky backs off to the corner of the room immediately, and Steve wants to tell him it's not his fault, he didn't do anything, but he can't concentrate in that light, like the sun glaring off snow.  
  
*  
  
He's not sure how he got stuck in Tony's workshop. After an embarrassingly in-depth consult with Dr. Reznick, Fury's head psychiatrist, who now knows things about him he'd never tell his own mother, Fury banned him from the facility for at least forty-eight hours while he figures out what to do with him. _You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here_ , he said, and Steve thought at first that he might head over to see Sam, crash on his couch, but found himself instead at the Stark Tower.  
  
All he meant to do was ask Tony about the modifications on Bucky's arm, maybe goad him into a few rounds in the boxing ring, but somehow – he thinks it was the promise of Tony's coffee, which is imported from somewhere probably not legal, if Tony's evasions are anything to go by – he wound up crouching next to Tony, who is on his back on a mechanic's creeper, halfway under what looks like an engine. Steve hands tools to him, although there are two robots in the workshop that will do that for him. One of them looks anxious at not being of use, making soft little electronic bloops and hovering over his shoulder. Steve thinks it's jealous, and lets it point out the right tools to him.  
  
"Okay, I have to ask," Tony says. He's in sweats and JARVIS keeps reminding him that he was supposed to be in the gym with Happy an hour ago. "You don't have to answer – actually, yes you do. Your sex talk face is what keeps me going."  
  
"Oh god," Steve says, handing Tony a tool of his own design that he calls a Sadie screwdriver because it's shaped exactly like a woman he met in Belgium. Steve suspects this story is mostly not true.  
  
Tony says, muffled by the engine, "So you gotta tell me, Cap, were you and the Winter Soldier doing the horizontal knife fight back in the day?"  
  
And dammit, Tony always gets him to blush. Steve punches him in the thigh.  
  
"Ow." Tony rubs his thigh with a greasy hand, leaving silvery stains on the fabric. "That's a gross abuse of government power. Gimme the soldering iron and answer the question."  
  
"No," he says. "We weren't. Not everybody is just...having sex all over the place, contrary to what you think."

"Sure they are," Tony says. "You're just completely uptight about it. I know it's not a generational thing, I mean, you met good old dad, right? Howard made me look like an altar boy. Mom too. The sixties were a wild time."  
  
"I'm not like that," Steve says. It feels like the thousandth time he's had this conversation.  
  
Something in the machine whirrs loudly for a few seconds. "I know you're not," Tony says when it's finished. "You want to lose your cherry on your wedding night and make sweet love to one person for the rest of your life. I get it."  
  
Every time. He goes to punch Tony's leg again, but Tony swivels out of the way.  
  
"I'm worried about your constant need to sublimate your emotions into violence," Tony says, sliding out from underneath the machine. "There. New transmission for Pepper. She's the single slowest driver in America today, cars hate her. JARVIS, when is Pepper's birthday?"  
  
"You instructed me not to tell you, sir," JARVIS replies. "You said you could remember on your own."  
  
"Ah, never mind, I'll make it a Halloween present. It's October, right?" he asks, throwing his tools onto the workbench and grabbing a towel. "Listen, Cap, you gotta see yourself when you look at Barnes. You're like sunshine filled with cotton candy. Everyone in that facility is getting diabetes because of you. It's disgusting."  
  
Steve opens his mouth, but Tony cuts him off.  
  
"But it's kind of – nice. And you know what, he's looking back at you the same way. Less sunshine, more murder and barbed wire, but that dude loves him some Captain America." Tony pats him on the shoulder, smearing grease on his white shirt. "That was a hell of a meltdown you had today."  
  
"You saw that, huh," Steve says, rubbing the back of his head.  
  
"Long as I've known you, you've been angry. Figured you had a reason or fifty," Tony says, pulling a bottle of water from a little freezer built into the wall. "Now that he's back, you got nowhere to put all that. You have to remember the experience of losing him every time you look at him. You gotta push through it. Let him break you down and build you back up again. Let him fuck your brains out –"  
  
"Oh my _god_ ," Steve groans, putting both hands over his face.  
  
"– whatever you need to do to shut down that little part of you that can't believe he's safe." Tony snaps his fingers and points at Steve. "Make a note, JARVIS. Self-help book. _Superhero in the Streets, Damsel in Distress in the Sheets_ , by Dr. Tony Stark. I'm gonna be so rich. Now get outta here. I have to go beat up Happy."  
  
He wanders off, leaving Steve confused, irritated, and – slightly – affectionate. All part of the Tony Stark Experience. The little helper robot sidles up to him with his cup of coffee.  
  
"The arm should be good for about fifty years, by the way," Tony calls out, turning around to walk backward away from him. "And I gave it a little compartment for lube. Always thinking about your safety."

*

When he gets to the lobby, Sam is waiting for him.

"How did you know I was here?" he asks, fiddling with the tiny new wireless comm Tony gave him. There's a barely-visible clip on his ear and at his collar. He never leaves Stark Tower without at least one thing Tony wants to test on him. The comm is meant to connect to his phone automatically and respond to his voice, which means, Steve suspects, he'll be "accidentally" dialing Tony quite a bit so Tony can listen to his conversations. Like he doesn't already.

"Fury told me," Sam says, leading him by the elbow. "Let's have a talk."


	2. Numbing

Fury likes diners, Steve's noticed. Either that, or he thinks Steve likes diners, and wants to placate him for some reason. Sam brings him to the back alley-est of back alley diners, and there's Fury in the farthest corner, blending in a way Steve would never have thought he could pull off even a year ago. No leather and eyepatch. He's just a guy in a Giants hoodie and glasses that disguise the slight off-ness about the left eye where, Steve guesses, he's wearing some kind of masking device.

"Sit," he commands. "Have a milkshake. The cherry vanilla is good."

Steve doesn't want to do what Fury says, but he happens to really like milkshakes. "Mint chocolate," he tells the waitress, who doesn't look at him with any recognition whatsoever.

Fury waits until she's out of earshot before he says, "We need to have a discussion about this morning's incident."

"That's never happened to me before," Steve says. "I think it was just the surprise. You know, the last time I really saw him – Bucky, not the Winter Soldier – it was right before he...died. It was probably just a weird reaction. Won't happen again."

"I know you like to pretend you don't know anything about the modern world, Captain, so I'm gonna let that bullshit slide," Fury says. "It's probably my fault anyway. I should have noticed you're almost as messed up as he is, but I've been a little busy."

"I'm actually fine," Steve mutters, but Sam gives him an incredulous look and he can't continue.

"But now that I have noticed," Fury goes on, ignoring them both, "what are we going to do about it?"

"I suggest we let Captain Rogers stay with Sergeant Barnes in the containment facility," Sam says.

Steve completely abandons his rational list of reasons why there's nothing wrong with him and they don't need to be having this conversation. "Yes," he says, pointing at Sam. "That's a great idea."

"That's a terrible idea," Fury says. "Do you know what kind of damage they can do to each other?"

"Exactly," Sam says coolly. "Who else is better equipped to deal with them?"

The waitress appears again, bearing their milkshakes and an order of fries for Sam. Steve tucks into his shake and watches Sam and Fury try to out-glare each other.

"Mr. Fury –" Sam begins.

"Director," Fury says.

"Oh, is that right? Director of what?" Sam takes a sip of his shake. "You asked for my opinion as a trauma counselor. I gave it. This is my job. This is what I do."

"I asked you for a consultation, not a stupidass suggestion that's gonna end in a superhero cage match." Fury throws down his napkin, and as much as Steve likes watching them argue, they can't afford to get physical. The building looks like it might collapse under a stiff breeze, for one thing. For another, Fury is supposed to be dead.

"Look," he says, holding up his hands. "I know it goes against the grain. But every time you let me nearer to Bucky, he gets better. I'm a stable point for him."

"And what about you, Captain?" Fury asks. "Exactly what do you call your little performance this morning? You think I want him fixed and you in there instead?"

"Helping him will help me," Steve says. "The better he gets, the more I'll feel like my mistakes didn't –"

He can't finish. Sam pats him on the shoulder, passing him the fries.

"From what Captain Rogers has told me, Sergeant Barnes spent his entire life being a protector." Sam steals the fries back, but when he sees Steve looking at them longingly, he pushes them across the table again. "Helping Steve recover might be the key to his recovery. Win-win."

Steve doesn't exactly like the sound of that – he doesn't need protecting, and has never wanted it – but if it means being closer to Bucky, he'll take it.

"All right," Fury says. "Say I let you stay with him. How are you going to control him if he tries to kill you in the night?" Steve opens his mouth, but Fury cuts him off. "Don't think it's escaped my notice that you're a little funny when it comes to letting yourself die."

"I can wear some kind of tranquilizer device," Steve says wearily. "I don't know. Something that won't hurt him."

Fury raises his eyebrows a little. This is his maybe face. "You think you can handle 24/7 observation?"

 _No_ , he thinks. "Yeah," he says. "If he has to deal with it, I can too."

Fury steals the fries away from both of them and won't give them back. "Trial basis," he says eventually. "And I will be billing you for damages to my facility."

Steve knows Tony built the underground facility and everything in it, and that if he and Bucky ever do get into it, Tony will care less about his property and more about placing bets on the winner, but he nods.

"I'm still not letting you back in the facility for another thirty-six hours," Fury says. "Go be a normal human for a while, Captain."

"He's gonna stay with me," Sam says easily. "We've got some serious **Sons of Anarchy** to catch up on."

*

He doesn't know why it feels like he's going into battle. Sam kicks up his feet, drinks a beer, and watches him pack and re-pack the suitcase he's been living out of for the last few months. He was with Steve through almost the entire search for Bucky, and even continued it on his own when Steve had to leave him in France for an Avengers incident, right before Bucky showed up on his door. Sam is the best friend he's ever had, after Bucky – and Sam even had a Bucky of his own, in a way – but Steve thinks he still can't quite understand.

"You're right, I didn't really get it before," Sam admits. "I mean, I knew you were obsessed, don't get me wrong. And don't even give me that look because you _know_ this is obsession. I just thought it was because he's your only link to the past, other than Agent Carter."

Steve pauses in the middle of stacking his t-shirts. "That's what it is, though. Mostly."

"Uh-huh," Sam says. "Mostly."

"Should I bring books, do you think?" Steve asks, staring down at the piles of clothes.

Sam stares at him for a minute, and Steve knows he's trying to figure out whether he should let it go or keep hammering at him. "What did you do to catch up on the last seventy years?" he says eventually.

"Wikipedia," Steve says, distracted. "Lots of Wikipedia."

"Let's track down one of those 'this year in history' DVDs," Sam says.

"Stark's tech can probably do that on its own." He straightens up and pulls out his phone, texting _Can you rig up something like a wikipedia documentary on the tv in Bucky's room?_ to Tony.

"You're a terrible lab rat," Tony says in his ear, and he jumps like a scalded cat. "Slash sad golden retriever puppy."

Sam stares at him until he points to his ear. "I forgot," he says. "Tony gave me a wireless...phone thing."

"Which you didn't use," Tony says pointedly. "I'm busy. What do you want?"

"Can you do some kind of a Wikip– "

"Got it. So the two of you can cuddle and watch the Cold War in color, right? You might want to warn your boy Pluto isn't a planet anymore. He's gonna be upset."

"You can do it, though?" Steve asks.

"Yep. JARVIS is already compiling. Hope you like disco."

Steve smiles and rolls his eyes. It's a reaction only Tony Stark can really get from him. "Wait. Pluto's not a planet?" But Stark's already gone. "Damn. How did I miss that?"

"It got declassified a while ago," Sam says. "I never saw what the big deal was."

Steve shakes his head. "Sam," he says, hoping it conveys the full weight of his disappointment.

"For your Christmas present this year I'm gonna take you to my parents' house so you and my dad can use that voice on me in stereo," Sam says, getting up to grab another beer.

*

He doesn't start to pass out this time, but things still get dicey when he walks into Bucky's room and his heart starts to beat out of rhythm.

"I think I need to sit down," he says, too loudly, and Bucky pulls out a chair for him at the table. He's too big for this room, and his feet don't feel like they're actually touching the ground.

"You don't look too good," Bucky says. He's hovering, a little, like he wants to do something for Steve but doesn't know how.

"I'm all right," he says, looking down at the floor and breathing in and out slowly, consciously. If he doesn't look up, right at Bucky, he thinks he'll be okay. "I'm more interested in how you're doing."

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Bucky taking a seat across from him. "I don't know what I am," he says. "But I'm better than I was."

"I know you must have a lot of questions," Steve says, still looking at the floor. "You can ask me anything, okay? You're not a prisoner, just a...a patient."

Bucky doesn't respond for a while. "Why am I in here?" he says finally. "The last thing I remember, I was in Toronto."

"I opened up my door one day and there you were," Steve says. "Unconscious and bleeding all over my welcome mat."

"You put me in here," Bucky says. He doesn't sound angry, just curious. Steve risks looking up at him, and sees that he's rubbing his palms over the tops of his thighs. Nervous.

"It was a condition of me being able to keep you alive," Steve admits. "I couldn't get the bullet out of you myself. I had to call Fury. I thought he'd...I don't know what I thought. But to get you patched up, I had to agree to you staying here until you aren't a threat anymore."

Bucky touches his right shoulder wonderingly. There's not even a scar there now, but when Steve dragged him into his apartment and cut off his shirt and jacket to see where the blood was coming from, the entire shoulder was grotesquely swollen and infected, beginning to turn black from blood poisoning. Steve remembers thinking, at the time, that Bucky might lose the other arm too. But almost as soon as Fury's doctors pulled out the bullet, buried in the bone, the infection began to recede. By nightfall it was gone and he was already starting to heal.

"Where do you live?" Bucky asks. "Where are we?"

"We're in Manhattan," Steve says. "I live – well, I live here. I sleep in there." He waves at the glass. "When you get better, I guess I'll get an apartment somewhere around here. Maybe we can move back to Brooklyn. Hipsters live there now."

"What the hell are hipsters?"

"I'm not sure." Steve grins. "They have good food, though."

"Stay here," Bucky blurts out. He looks surprised by himself, but forges ahead anyway. "I mean, if you're living here anyway, why don't you stay in here with me? You must be bored, just watching me all the time."

"Funny you should say that," Steve says. "I was sorta ordered to stay in here, actually. Well, it was strongly suggested, anyway."

"So you can watch over me?" Bucky's mouth tightens. "Make sure I don't hurt myself?"

"No," Steve says. He twists his hands together, feeling his face go hot. "They want you to watch over me. Well, we're supposed to look after each other."

"Me watch over you? Why?" Bucky leans forward to meet Steve's eyes. "What happened to you?"

"I haven't...I haven't been doing too great, Buck," he says. His throat is a little tight, and he coughs. "I don't know. I thought I was fine. But I guess I'm not."

"You got sick the other day."

"Kinda." He doesn't really know how to explain it, but guesses he has to try sometime, if only for Bucky's sake. "Sometimes when something bad happens to you, it messes you up and you don't even know it. You start to feel sick for no reason. You ever get like that?"

Bucky shakes his head. "We used to call it battle fatigue, remember? I never really got it."

Steve remembers how much quieter Bucky was after the HYDRA factory, how he would sometimes stare into the woods for so long Steve would go out looking for scouts in the trees. "I remember," he says carefully. "I'm surprised you remember it though. Last time I saw you, you didn't know who I was."

"It took me a couple months to even figure out who _I_ was," Bucky says. "But I got it back now. All of it."

"Everything." Steve straightens in his chair, forgetting that he can barely look at Bucky without falling over. "That's great, Buck – god, that's just – that's great."

"Yeah," Bucky says, and smiles. Ever since they were little kids, Bucky has had this one smile he'd give when things weren't going so well but he wanted to pretend they were. It was more of a grimace, the way the corners of his mouth lifted but his eyes couldn't participate in the smile somehow. Sometimes it was the only way Steve knew anything was wrong, because Bucky was never a complainer. And Steve realizes, suddenly, that if he got all of it back, that means he remembers _everything_ , snowball fights with his sisters and Steve after school and the time he got drunk and fell and broke his nose in the bathtub, New Year's Eve 1940 with Miss New York, the fishing trip with Carl where it rained the whole weekend, dinners at Steve's house. It means he remembers killing Howard Stark. It means he remembers his first target, when HYDRA was still testing to see how well he'd obey and how much of his former life he'd forgotten.

"Do you remember being frozen?" Steve asks.

Bucky looks down at his hands, flesh and metal twisting together, and then up again. Smiling and not smiling. "Do you?"

Steve nods.

"Aren't we a pair," Bucky says.

"We're something," he agrees.

Steve wants to touch him, to grab his hand like he would have once upon a time. In the old days, if Bucky was feeling bad or even just tired after a long day of work, he'd lay down with his head pillowed on Steve's leg and they'd read for hours with the radio in the background. Steve wouldn't want to mess up his hair, but after a while Bucky would grab his hand and place it deliberately on top of his head, and Steve would wait until he said _come on Steve, it feels best when you do it_ before running his fingers through Bucky's thick hair while he sighed happily. Bucky liked to be touched, but he was choosy as a cat and only wanted it from the people he liked best: his mother and Steve.

"Hey," Steve says, trying to think of anything else. "I got us some entertainment."

He gets up and walks over to the television, set back in the wall, but when he gets closer to look at the buttons, Bucky says, "We could play cards. Crazy Eights. We were tied, remember?"

It's so strange how something so little can make him feel like he's actually there again: sitting on a bucket in a warehouse that smelled like a decade of mold, slapping a card down on the table they'd thrown together out of an old pallet. It's so clear – dripping water, Bucky across from him with his sleeves pushed up and a damp cigarette jutting out of his mouth, looking down at the eight of hearts – he feels like he's there and here at the same time, pulled back and forth between them.

"Yeah," he says. "I'm sure someone's got cards."

"You can tell me more stories while we play," Bucky says. He looks up at Steve and suddenly his face is as open and bright as it was when they were kids, when the best day was a day they could go outside and play together. Steve wonders if people die of nostalgia the way they can die of heartbreak, or if it's the same thing.

"I guess I don't need to tell you about the old days anymore," Steve says, rubbing the side of his face. "I got a hell of a story about aliens, though. You're gonna like it."

"I know it. I looked you up while I was on the move," Bucky says. "But you should tell me anyway."

He nods. "All right. But just so you know, sometime I'm gonna want to hear your stories, too."

Bucky taps his metal fingers on the table. "Yeah," he says. "I guess you will."

*

Someone's lowered the lights in the room a little. He suspects Dr. Reznick had them dimmed after his near-hysterical rant on the inefficiency of lighting Bucky's room like a baseball stadium. It's nice. The techs have a long, complicated game of Triple Klondike going, and they hand over one of their packs of cards so Steve and Bucky can play Crazy Eights at the table. But Bucky's reflexes are ever so slightly faster than Steve's, and he wins fifteen rounds in a row before they decide to switch to Rummy.

Steve talks until they get deep into one hand, and then they're silent except for the occasional muttered _son of a bitch_. When it's finished, Bucky says, "Come on, tell me more."

"About what?" he asks.

"Anything. I just like to hear you talk," he says. He nudges Steve's leg with his bare toes. "Tell me what happened after I fell off the train. You keep dancing around it. I wanna know."

"No." Steve doesn't mean it to come out as harshly as it does, but he finds himself unable to soften it or apologize, and he pushes away from the table fast enough to knock over his chair. Bucky tilts his head and watches Steve pack up the cards. "I'm gonna –" He jerks a thumb toward the glass. "Be right back."

But after he gives the cards back to the techs, he wanders out into the corridor and steadies himself in the hall. The entire structure is built underneath a coffee house, and although it's closed for the day, he gets into the elevator and heads up to the ground level just to see the outside world through the windows of the empty building.

When he gets back, Bucky's already in his bed, and the lights are out. Steve retrieves his cot from the observation room.

"You missed Director Fury," Parker tells him. "He asked for a status report."

"What did you tell him?" Steve asks, not greatly caring.

"Just that you had stepped out." She's shuffling the deck of cards Steve gave back to her. "We're trying to do minimal obs. Give you a little privacy."

"Thanks," he says, raising his cot at her in a salute.

Bucky doesn't say anything when he comes back in, although Steve knows he's not asleep. He brushes his teeth in the bathroom, noting that the shower curtain has a big, showy 'A' splashed across the middle of it. Bucky's apparently met Tony a few times without Steve knowing about it, and seems amused by him, the way he was amused by Howard. "Boy, that apple didn't fall very far from the tree, did it?" he asked, and Steve guesses, if you strip away all the extra outward trappings – like embroidered shower curtains – Bucky's mostly right.

He doesn't think he's going to be able to sleep, not with Bucky awake, but almost the moment he puts his head down and murmurs, "G'night, Buck," he's out.

*

He wakes with a shout, the end of a scream he couldn't get out around a mouth and throat full of ice. Bucky is standing beside his cot and he shouts again and flinches away.

"Hey, come on pal, you're all right," Bucky says, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder.

Steve is still mostly in the dream and puts his hand over Bucky's. He's shivering so hard it's like he's in the ice again, and maybe he'll always be there, he thinks, unable to move and surrounded by a solid sheet of darkness. The ice, for some reason, looms large and terrible over him and he can't break free from it, not even when he starts to become a little more aware of his surroundings. He tugs on Bucky's arm hard so he's on the cot, and starts to draw him in.

"Steve – " Bucky says, but it's not really a protest. He sits on the cot and lets Steve hold onto his hand, presses it against Steve's heart. It's beating so hard and he feels like he's going to be sick if he doesn't keep Bucky's hand exactly there, his palm warm through Steve's shirt. After a while, the huge, blank fear that makes him senseless starts to retreat. It doesn't go entirely – never does, until he's awake in the daylight – but he's himself again and not an animal scrabbling away from a predator.

Bucky doesn't say anything the entire time, and that's strange. Bucky was always the one to fill a silence, if he ever let one happen to begin with. But he seems to have learned, or been forced to learn, how to be quiet.

The sweat on his face is starting to dry around his temples by the time he lets go of Bucky's hand and says, quiet in the almost-dark room, "Sorry."

"Do you want me to stay?" Bucky asks. He doesn't sound sleepy. Steve imagines Bucky would stay awake all night and watch over him if he asked.

"I don't need a teddy bear," he says stiffly.

"You do a little," Bucky replies, smirking. They shared a bed in the winter in Brooklyn – far too cold for them not to, especially in the winter of 1939, when one of their windows cracked – and he remembers how often he'd wake up, after having gone to sleep back-to-back, to find himself wrapped around Bucky's warm body with his face pressed between his shoulder blades. The memory of that comfort, the shelter of that bed, has carried him through hundreds of nights since.

"You liked being the teddy bear," he points out, because whenever he'd made halfhearted attempts to pull away, Bucky would draw him back in, wriggling until Steve was holding him. During the war he made a conscious effort not to do it, and he was successful unless it was Bucky he was sleeping next to. Everyone gave them flack for it – Monty would say Dum Dum was a much better lovey than Barnes because he was fat, and Dum Dum would offer himself up willingly, reasoning that he'd finally get a good night's sleep with a thousand pounds of Captain America draped over him. And Bucky, who held onto Steve's arm tight each night so he wouldn't let go while they were sleeping, would give a little smile and let Steve fumble through the teasing. Then there was the night in Salzburg when Steve finally asked Bucky to tell him everything that had happened in Zola's lab, and Bucky blurted it all out in a rush, every single terrible thing he could remember, before he abruptly told Steve about a man he shot in front of his son in Zwoleń. He said it again and again – _right in front of his son, Steve, I got him right in front of his little boy_ – until his voice began to crack and he cried so hard he choked on it like a child and only stopped when he fell asleep on Steve's chest, inside his sleeping roll with Steve's jacket wrapped around both of them. After that, nobody teased them.

"It's just because you're warm," Bucky says. "Even when you were ninety pounds, you were a little radiator."

But he doesn't tuck himself into Steve's arms the way he would have easily at one time, just lifts up and slides under the sheet Steve's thrown over himself. The cot isn't very big, and their feet bump together while Bucky makes himself comfortable. He jerks away like he's been shocked before settling.

"Tell me another story," he whispers, tapping Steve's arm. "Come on, tell me about what happened after I fell."

Steve shakes his head. "I never want to think about that again."

"Did you take Peggy dancing that night?" Bucky's voice is light, like he's trying to joke around but there's a part of him that thinks maybe – maybe that's exactly what Steve did.

Steve doesn't talk for a long time. Bucky died – fell – only days before Steve did, and those days are a blur. He didn't sleep or eat, blind to everything but destroying HYDRA from top to bottom. And he still didn't get Zola, who managed to hurt Bucky even from the grave.

"I took out HYDRA and killed Schmidt," he says hollowly. "And myself."

"Jesus, Steve," Bucky says. In the faint light, Steve can see the way his eyebrows draw together, the unhappy twist of his mouth.

"I wasn't suicidal or anything, it just happened," Steve says. "I had to go after them. I was never – you know I wasn't like the other guys looking to kill Nazis. I never wanted to kill anyone, Buck. That wasn't why I joined. But after you died, yeah. I wanted HYDRA dead, and I just happened to go down with them."

He doesn't say _Before I saw you again, I used to wonder if I hadn't died after all, and this was hell._ It crosses his mind often, when things don't seem quite real. It could be hell, or some other kind of punishment for killing without any reason except vengeance. But he always knows he'd do it again if he had the chance.

The room is silent except for their breathing. He concentrates on that breath – Bucky's life, his strong body, his soft skin laid over hard muscle and the way his hair cowlicks everywhere if he doesn't slick it down, the smell of him and how he still says 'wouldja look at that' when he's impressed, the red of his mouth and the pitted scars where the metal attaches to his body, the way he trusts Steve enough right now to keep his back to the room even though it's been seventy years since they slept next to each other, all the things that make him Bucky Barnes.

"I guess I didn't think I was that important to Captain America," Bucky says finally.

"Well, you're an idiot." Steve wants to kiss him so much – he doesn't remember ever wanting to kiss him this badly. "I gave up a promising career in show business to come rescue you, you know."

Bucky gives him a half smile. "I used to be so jealous," he says. "Not of you. Of everybody else who suddenly noticed you and wanted a piece. You didn't need me anymore. Nobody would have dared try to bully you."

"I wasn't friends with you because you were my knight in shining armor, Buck," Steve says, exasperated. "You could never accept that you were more than that. What you've been through, nobody else could have come out the other side unless – unless there was something really special there. And you are. Special."

He falters, feeling stupid and not knowing how else to say it without just going all in.

"I'll always need you," he says roughly. "Now come on, I want to sleep."

He expects Bucky to keep talking out of pure contrariness, but he doesn't. Across the inches of space between them, Bucky reaches out and grabs his hand, skin on skin. After only a few minutes, Steve knows he's asleep, really asleep, his breath deep and slow and his pulse evening out. He squeezes Bucky's hand and follows him. This time, he dreams they're in Brooklyn again, in the old apartment with the scratched-up wooden floors and no furniture. The sun through the windows is too bright, like there's snow outside.

"It's been a long time since I danced," Bucky says, putting his left arm around Steve's back. He's gentle, and the metal is cool through Steve's shirt. "I'm not sure I remember how to do it."

"I never learned," Steve says. "Am I leading?"

"Yeah, of course you are." Bucky grabs his hand and leans close so they're cheek to cheek. "You just sway a little. That's it."

He sways. They're both in their uniforms. Harry James and his Orchestra is on the radio – how often did they listen to that song? "Poverty may come to me, it's true, but what care I, say, I'll get by as long as I have you," warbles Dick Haymes's voice, not as good as Billie Holiday's, but it's Bucky's favorite version nonetheless. They saw "A Guy Named Joe" three times when they were in Italy. Steve dips his head down to ask Bucky if he remembers that, but his lips brush against the smoothness of Bucky's cheek and he's distracted by his aftershave – he could pick out that smell in a crowd even now, sharp and sexy – and Bucky turns his head for a kiss. His mouth is cherry sweet, juicy. Steve wants to sink into it and so, in the way of dreams, he can: he sinks down onto the floor and presses Bucky down, down, kisses him until he's a mess, and everything else recedes in a rush around them because the only thing that matters in all the worlds anywhere is James Buchanan Barnes.

He wakes up before Bucky, who is asleep with his mouth open. If he doesn't look at Bucky's metal arm, tucked underneath his body, they could be anywhere in time. He slides out of the cot and Bucky's eyes open.

"I'm just going for a run," Steve says, hushed like they're actually alone in a room of their own.

"Okay," Bucky murmurs, smiling lazily. "Bring me pancakes."

In the observation room, the techs stare at him.

"Hey," he says defensively. "Look, we slept –" he checks his watch – "seven hours in a row. I haven't done that since 1943."

Rodriguez puts up his hands. "I didn't say anything."

"Yeah, well, keep on not saying anything," Steve says, but he's smiling on his way out.


	3. Intrusion

When Steve comes back from his run, Bucky's already gone. It's Monday, the day they do his tests. Steve realized only a few weeks in that they hustle Bucky off to do the scans specifically when he's not around so he won't ask to come along, but he thought, for some reason, that they might let him go with Bucky now. He makes a note to ask Bucky how much they tell him, if they let him understand everything they're doing to him or if they keep him in the dark. He doesn't think Fury would even mean to do it – it's just so ingrained in him at this point that he can't help it. If he did have a wife, Steve thinks as he steps into the shower, he'd probably tell her he was a dentist and install a GPS in her wedding ring.   
  
Halfway through his shower, the comms go off. "Captain Rogers, Director Fury would like you to meet him in the medical wing."  
  
He swallows a shriek, covering himself before he remembers there aren't any cameras in the bathroom, and says, "Tell him I'll be there as soon as I – when I'm out of the shower."  
  
He finishes so fast he's not even fully dry when he jogs past the med bay on the sixth floor down. He passes two agents recovering from what he assumes are mild burns, and wonders what kind of missions they've been running. He's been so absorbed in Bucky that he hasn't even noticed the changes in the facility. He's barely noticed the shift from summer to fall.  
  
He finds Bucky with Fury and Dr. Shannen in the private rooms past the medical bay. Bucky, sitting in an office chair as casually as one of the medical staff, looks up at him with a grin and he finds himself smiling back a little too long and far too fondly, because Bucky's expression is almost an entire conversation in and of itself: it's _hello_ and _nice of you to show up_ and _where are my pancakes_. It's one of those things he thought he might have exaggerated in his memories because he missed it so much – knowing Bucky so well they could talk to each other without words.  
  
Dr. Shannen pulls him into the room as soon as she sees him, pointing to what he assumes are new scans.  
  
"Captain Rogers," she says, "you should see – "  
  
But he does see, immediately. Where the red blotches, the trigger points, had covered a still sizable portion of Bucky's brain the last time he'd looked at the scans, they've shrunk to nearly a tenth of their original size.  
  
"This has happened in only a week," Dr. Shannen says, guiding him to the overhead scanner. She waves at Bucky, who gets up and stands beside Steve.  
  
"If the two of you can stand still for a few minutes, the doctor and I have a theory we'd like to test out," Fury says.  
  
"Wait," Steve says, holding up his hands. "What are you doing? And does Sergeant Barnes know what's going on?"  
  
"I've been informed," Bucky says dryly. "They want to do a scan to see if we actually heal each other."  
  
It's a curious little thought that's been lingering in the back of his mind, somewhat, since the first time he saw the scans of Bucky's brain and realized his presence was reducing the trigger points. And if that's so – if Bucky heals the way Steve does, and if being near Steve increases that healing – well, he has a lot of questions. "All right, I guess you can go ahead," he says.  
  
He's been scanned by Stark technology before, many times. The blue light, so like the Tesseract, upset him until Tony admitted, in that offhand way he has when he's talking about something important to him, that it reminds him of his father. _Arc reactor blue_ , he called it. _I see it and I'm three years old again, trying to understand daddy's toys._ Since then it's put Steve in mind of Howard too, and that's a much more pleasant connection.  
  
It takes a few minutes for the initial scan to finish, announcing the data as it appears on the wall: cardiovascular, circulatory, respiratory, skeletal. When it starts in on the nervous system, Dr. Shannen says, "Full model, please," and a hologram of their bodies appears in front of them. Shannen strips away the skin, hair, and musculature from the model and says, "Now, Captain Rogers, touch Sergeant Barnes, please."  
  
When he grips Bucky's wrist, the scans change slightly. Steve can't stop staring at the way the metal in Bucky's body wraps all the way around his ribs, his collar, his spine.  
  
"Full analysis," Shannen says. "Contrast between first and second scans, overall functionality."  
  
Steve always expects the voice of any AI to be JARVIS, but the one in the medical wing sounds female. Actually, he thinks, it sounds like the British chef whose show Sam keeps "accidentally" recording on the DVR. "All systems experience a .04% increase in functionality."  
  
"Can you do a contrast between these scans and the ones you did before Captain Rogers was in the room?" Fury asks.  
  
"All systems experience a .6% increase in functionality," it replies after a moment.  
  
"That will be all. Store data under Sergeant Barnes's file, please," Shannen says, and when the lights come up again and the holograms disappear, she gestures toward the chairs.  
  
"It's from the serum, isn't it," Steve says. He lets go of Bucky's wrist reluctantly, but Bucky stays close to him when they sit. If he's being honest with himself, there's a small part of him that wants to latch onto Bucky and not let go of him, ever. It's starting to really disrupt the intricate set of rules he's always abided by, the ones that have allowed him to not just ignore the way he feels about Bucky but to shove it so far away that it only appears in his dreams. If he let himself, he thinks he'd probably tie them together so they could never go anywhere without each other again. That's probably one of those thoughts he should bring up with the psychiatrist, he thinks, and forces himself not to put a hand on Bucky's back the way he wants to.  
  
"I assume so, yes," Fury says. "Dr. Banner's going to find this very interesting. He'll want to run further tests, but I doubt it's a coincidence considering you've been experimented upon using a similar serum."  
  
"So this is – some kind of metabolic reaction?" Steve asks.  
  
"Something like that," Dr. Shannen replies.  
  
"But if everything else is healing..." He keeps seeing the metal, the tendrils of it wrapped all the way through Bucky's spine, and can't continue.  
  
"What he's trying to ask is why I'm not regrowing my arm," Bucky says, smiling grimly.  
  
"That was one of our first questions as well," Dr. Shannen admits. "We're not entirely sure how it affects bone regrowth –"  
  
"No," Bucky says. "You know exactly how. It could grow back. But they made sure it won't."  
  
"The scientists appear to have conjoined it with the nervous and cardiovascular systems in such a way that to remove it entirely would kill him," Dr. Shannen says. "We can remove the arm itself, but not the socket, not the rest of the metal."  
  
"The metal restricts new growth, files down the remaining bone," Bucky says, sounding like he's repeating something he's heard many times. Steve braces himself a little more firmly in his seat, feeling sick. Bucky must see something of that in his face, because he adds, "It doesn't hurt. Took them a while, but they figured out how to shut down the pain."  
  
"That was unusually kind of them," Fury says.  
  
"They needed me to be functional," Bucky says, and Steve gives up on his earlier resolve and touches him anyway, a hand on his back like he wanted to before. Bucky leans into him and Steve wonders if he's having the same kind of problem – if he needs to be close, has to touch to make sure he's still there. He's starting to feel like this is going to end with him crawling into Bucky's lap like a dog during a thunderstorm.  
  
"The fact is, Sergeant Barnes, that you are almost completely recovered, physically," Fury says. "And we need to start thinking about what we're gonna do about that."  
  
"Do you want me to get Dr. Reznick?" Shannen asks, halfway out of her seat.  
  
"No," Fury says. "Just leave me with Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers, if you would."  
  
When the door shuts behind her, Fury spins in his chair lazily and then leans forward, looking at Bucky like he's a rare bug.  
  
"Almost completely physically recovered," he says again, almost as if he's speaking to himself. "And not doing too bad on the mental recovery, either. You're talking now. Why didn't you before?"  
  
It was one of the things Steve had asked him while they played cards. He hadn't answered then, only shrugged, but now he says, "I wanted to figure out where I was, who I was dealing with, before I started talking. You coulda been anyone – coulda been HYDRA, for all I knew."  
  
"But Captain Rogers convinced you otherwise."  
  
"Not at first." Bucky gives Steve a brief, apologetic smile. "I thought for a while he might be a trick or a hallucination. But after a while I realized – if he was just my imagination, I'd have made him happier. He didn't sound too happy. I thought maybe if I said something you'd let me see him and I could figure out if he was real."  
  
"And what do you think now?" Fury asks. Steve wonders what it is Fury wants to get out of Bucky. He always wants something.  
  
"I know this isn't HYDRA. Nobody's hurting me." Bucky licks his lips. He's a terrible poker player, almost as bad as Steve is, with more tells than a little kid. Licking his lips, twitching his right middle finger, clenching his jaw, rubbing his nose, pushing his hair back. It's easy to tell when there's something going on in his head and he's trying to hide it. "I'm pretty sure Steve is real. I could never dream up shoes that ugly."  
  
It's difficult to laugh when Nick Fury's eye is glaring at you like he's thinking about popping it out of his head and beating you to death with it, but Steve does smile a little bit. "You could be getting out of this facility soon, if you play your cards right. Do you think you're ready for that?"  
  
Bucky tilts his head. "You gonna upgrade me to a regular prison? That wouldn't be so bad. You can store a lot of cigarettes in this arm."  
  
"Sergeant Barnes, after all you've done, do you really think we'd just let you go to prison?" Fury asks. "Do you think anyone could ever consider you to be anything but an enemy to the United States and its allies?"  
  
"Don't, Fury," Steve says, curling his fingers into Bucky's shirt without even realizing he's doing it. "Don't do that to him."  
  
Fury opens his mouth and Steve knows he's about to get kicked out of the room, but Bucky interrupts. "It's all right. I think he has a right to ask. I did shoot him three times."  
  
It's a smooth line, designed to hurt even though Bucky's being casually agreeable. Fury gives a slight nod toward Steve. "You shot him three times, too. How do you feel about that?"  
  
Bucky doesn't so much as twitch, but Steve can feel the tension thrumming through his body. His arm makes a small whirring noise.  
  
"You've dealt with everything else very well," Fury says – gentle now, Steve thinks, because he's found what he was looking for. "But I don't think you've dealt with that yet, and it's going to be unpleasant when you do."  
  
Steve strokes Bucky's back until he relaxes a fraction. "Is that all?" Bucky asks, looking straight ahead like a soldier waiting for orders, chin jutted out angrily. But Fury won't let Bucky look away from him, staring at him hard until Bucky responds.  
  
"For today, yes." He clasps his hands together, looking more sincere than Steve's ever seen him. Which means, of course, that he's probably hiding something. "I have operatives who have spent nearly their entire lives brainwashed. I've been shot by my own people before. You're not a special case, Sergeant Barnes. At least, not until you do something about it. Then I suspect you'll be a very special case indeed."  
  
He stands up, straightening his jacket. "The two of you have a meeting with Agent Wilson in the coffee house topside tomorrow at eleven hundred hours."  
  
"The two of us?"  
  
"Yes, I thought you might like to see the light of day for a little while," Fury says, turning to the door and looking down at Bucky. "Start thinking about what you'd do as a free man, Sergeant Barnes. The Captain can escort you back to your room."  
  
And with that, he's gone and they're alone in the room. All the tension goes with him, but Steve doesn't move his hand.  
  
"Okay?" he asks.  
  
"Yeah." Bucky shakes his head, laughing. "He knows how to make a dramatic exit. Entrance. Everything in between. Is he always like that? Ominous?"  
  
"Yeah," Steve says. "You – I was gonna say you get used to it, but you really don't."  
  
"What I don't get," Bucky says, getting up and stalking around the room, restless, "is _why_. What's the point of making me better? I know it's not out of the goodness of their hearts."  
  
"No." Steve watches him move and wonders how tightly he keeps himself under wraps, because this is the first time he actually looks like he's been caged. "I'm pretty sure Fury wants to recruit you."  
  
"Why?" He shoves a hand through his hair, his lips twisted in confusion. "I won't be the Winter Soldier again. Not even for you. I'll kill myself first."  
  
"You think I'd ever let that happen? I'd break you outta here in a minute, and they know it," Steve says. "HYDRA was stupid enough to try and strip away the best part of you. Fury's not stupid; he can see how amazing you are. And he knows..."  
  
"Knows what, huh?"  
  
Steve sighs. "He knows I work better. With you."  
  
The pleased little smile that appeared on Bucky's face after the word "amazing" expands into a full smirk.  
  
"Don't look at me like that," Steve says. "You know I can do just fine by myself."  
  
"I know you can," Bucky says. "So can I. But I was always better with you, too."  
  
Steve doesn't know if he agrees, not at first – he remembers always thinking Bucky would be better off without a scrawny, sick friend to worry about and look after. If not for Steve, there was a whole different life Bucky could have led, maybe one where he wasn't in the 107th because he didn't have Steve around to make proud, where he showed off his natural skill and went to the war a mechanic or even a pilot, where he came home and got married and led an ordinary, pleasant life and died in his sleep a happy old man. But Steve remembers the total exhilaration of going on a mission with Bucky, the high of being so perfectly in tandem with him, and Bucky's face when he turned to Steve after their plans fell into place – excited, laughing brightly, in love with the adventure. They have always been at their best together.  
  
"You think it was the serum?" he asks.  
  
"Nah. It's just because you're you and I'm me." Bucky squeezes his shoulder. "I'm hungry. Pancakes, right? And later I'll show you how to do pushups. You're looking a little scrawny."  
  
*  
  
"It's only hitting me now," Steve says the next day when they get into the elevator to go up to the first floor. "It's really been almost five months. I haven't even noticed."  
  
"This is the longest I've been out of cryo since they started shutting me up in there," Bucky says. "Are there going to be people looking at us? Is it safe for us to be out in public?"  
  
"The coffee house is pretty much only for agents," Steve says. On the one hand, he's glad Bucky feels safe enough to state things so plainly, accepting that these are events he's been through. Hell, he's glad Bucky remembers the events in the first place. On the other hand, while watching the timelines JARVIS put together the night previously, Bucky had muttered _I think I killed that guy_ on three separate occasions. The fourth time, he couldn't keep a straight face, and Steve realized he was joking and threw the remote at him, but he's not entirely sure Bucky was kidding about the other three. His sense of humor hasn't gotten any less bizarre over time.  
  
"Then they'll definitely all be looking at us," Bucky says. He leans in very close to Steve, pressed tight against his side, until the elevator dings and he takes a deep breath before walking firmly out into the hallway. Steve follows, staying back a little so he won't touch. During his morning run, he promised himself he'd back off as much as possible, but if anyone so much as squints at Bucky he feels like he might take out the entire coffee house.  
  
Sam is in one of the booths by the windows, and stands up when he sees Bucky and Steve.  
  
"Hey," he says, shaking Bucky's hand. "Sam Wilson."  
  
"Bucky Barnes." Bucky's mouth is tight, eyes dark and flat suddenly. "I gotta apologize –"  
  
"Nah," Sam says, sitting down again. "We're good."  
  
And that's one of the things Steve loves about Sam – he can say stuff like that and not just mean it but let you know that it really is okay and you're going to be fine. Bucky sits in the booth first and looks out the window. Steve would have thought he'd be eager for a sight of the world – Steve feels like wants to burst out of the building and run around the block just because he can, and he's allowed to leave whenever he wants – but he only scans the sidewalk outside and then turns back to Sam. He was right; every agent in the coffee house is pretending not to look at them. It's making the back of Steve's neck itch, and he struggles not to put his arm around Bucky like a shield.   
  
"How are you this morning, _Agent_ _Wilson_?" Steve asks pointedly.  
  
"Yeah, he finally wore me down," Sam says, but he doesn't look too upset about it.  
  
"Don't lie," Steve says. "Natasha asked you nice one time and you fell all over yourself to say yes."  
  
"She is a very convincing person," Sam says primly. "How are the two of you adjusting to being roomies? I bet you don't leave him without a single dry towel after you take a shower."  
  
"Come on, it was one time. The towels in that hotel were like washcloths," Steve protests. He suddenly really wants a cup of coffee, and wonders if anyone actually works here, or if everyone just brings coffee in from home.  
  
"Yeah, he'll tell you he needs like twenty towels just to dry off his giant chest, but he doesn't. He just needs one towel like a normal-ass person," Sam tells Bucky, who's watching them and smirking, and Steve realizes the flaw in introducing these two people to each other just as he sees Bucky's eyes light up.   
  
"Let me tell you about Steve and towels," Bucky says, and Steve groans and puts his hands over his face. "And the time Mrs. Dale took down her wash while Steve was in the tub, so all the neighbors across the way got a free show when he got out. He kept himself covered in towels like a mummy after that."  
  
"You were the one who learned to sew and made curtains for the bathroom window," Steve mumbles from behind his hands.  
  
Bucky looks down at the table. "Yeah, yeah," he says, but he's grinning like he's pleased about something.  
  
"You two are pretty close, huh," Sam says, looking straight at Steve and raising an eyebrow, and Steve – well, he's not stupid. Even if Tony hadn't said anything, he would have known there were people who thought he and Bucky were like that. There have always been people who thought he and Bucky were like that. It's because of him, he knows – because he's so much worse at poker than Bucky is, and no matter how hard he shoves his feelings away they're probably written all over his face when he looks at Bucky. But it isn't like Steve spent his life yearning or anything, and Bucky's never seemed to notice or care; any sly comments were met with a bland look and a reminder that he liked dames and Steve liked dames and that they were like brothers.  
  
Which is exactly what Steve is about to say – _of course, we're like brothers_ – before Bucky says, "Yeah, really close," with that same old look, like he's daring Sam to say something else.  
  
Sam clears his throat instead and says, "So, let's talk about how we're gonna do this thing."  
  
"What thing?"  
  
"Oh, of course he didn't say anything about it, of course he didn't, that's helpful," Sam says, throwing his hands up. "Did he even ask you if you wanted to be an agent?"  
  
"No," Bucky says, "but we kinda figured it out."  
  
"He asked Bucky to think about what he'd do as a free man," Steve adds.  
  
"Cryptic motherf – all right, Natasha will be back tomorrow, so she can explain what she's gonna do," Sam says. "But for my part, I'm supposed to try to transition you into the real world again."  
  
"I can do that on my own," Bucky says. "I know how to do things for myself."  
  
"You can probably kidnap the President, but can you go grocery shopping in broad daylight instead of breaking in at night and stealing food?" Sam asks. "Do you remember how to do normal?"  
  
"I –" Bucky says, and shifts, looking uncomfortable. "I can figure it out."  
  
"Steve, how long did it take you to figure out how to buy a car?"  
  
"Uuuumm," Steve says, because he hasn't actually. Yet.  
  
"Okay, ignore this bad example over here," Sam says, waving his hand to encompass Steve's entire being. "Do you even have a bank account?"  
  
"He does. I opened one for him," Steve says. The smile Bucky turns on him is so bright he almost forgets his name for a second before he starts to actually feel the blush slowly creeping over his face. "You've, uh, got a lot of back pay coming in. And I'm still listed as your proxy."  
  
"So you're trying to cash in now that I'm rich," Bucky murmurs.  
  
"Maybe you can buy me a car," Steve says. "I don't really know how."  
  
Sam flicks a packet of Equal at him. "Hey, pay attention. We also have to figure out how to reintroduce Bucky Barnes to the world."  
  
"What, you mean – we're gonna let people know he's alive?" Steve isn't sure how he feels about this. No, he's sure: this is not a good idea at all.  
  
"It's gonna be hard to hide him. Might as well get it out there."  
  
Bucky looks back and forth between them again. "Why would it be hard to hide me? I might not be able to go grocery shopping, but hiding – I can do that."  
  
Sam shoots Steve an amused glance. "Your boy here is pretty famous."  
  
Bucky shakes his head. "So?"  
  
"So we need to talk about paparazzi," Sam says.  
  
Steve stands up. "I'm going to get some coffee. You want some?" he asks Bucky, who shakes his head. He's not sure why it embarrasses him so much to hear people talk about how famous he is. When he was pulled from the ice, there was an initial flurry of interest, but he was still in his own transition then and wasn't aware of the news. But the Chitauri incident put all the Avengers on the media radar, and since the takedown of SHIELD, he's always showing up on celebrity gossip sites. Tony likes to text him snippets. _"Brooklyn's own Captain America, Steve Rogers, grabs a post-workout bite,"_ this morning's text said. Attached was a picture of him with his hands on his hips, waiting in line for a smoothie. _"The crime-fighting hottie is still single because, a friend claims, he hasn't found a girl who can keep up with his schedule! We volunteer gorgeous redhead and fellow Avenger Natasha Romanoff (click for Natasha's summer workout)."_  
  
When he returns to the table with three cups of espresso – as it turns out, people actually do work here, and they really, really want to make Captain America's coffee – Sam is telling Bucky about the time he was in _US Weekly_ when they did a feature on "Captain America's 21st-Century Crew."  
  
"They got elementary school pictures from my mom, man," Sam says. "You don't even know. It was one of those school pictures with the lasers in the background. I was wearing a _denim shirt_."  
  
Bucky nods sympathetically like he knows exactly what Sam is talking about.  
  
"You're famous, too," Steve says, sliding a cup to Bucky and a cup to Sam. "You saw the Smithsonian exhibit. They got a bunch of our stuff from the old apartment. There's a whole display of my drawings of you and your letters to me."  
  
"Yeah, I saw those," Bucky says, wincing. "I don't remember being that sappy when I wrote them."  
  
"Actually somebody used one of them in a country song a few years ago." Bucky looks more than a bit mortified, so he adds, "Yeah, it goes...something something _let them keep you safe till I get back to you_ , something something _I'm fine and I'm coming home to take care of you soon_. I guess it was big after September 11th."  
  
"Oh, god." Bucky closes his eyes.  
  
"There are books about us. Oh, and a video game where I rescue you," Steve says. "I played it. It's pretty accurate."  
  
"You know, you should be glad your letters to me ended up in a fire pit somewhere in Russia," Bucky says. "You were way more embarrassing than I was."  
  
"Did you keep my letters on you, Buck?" He intends it to be teasing, but it doesn't come out that way. It comes out soft.  
  
"Yeah," Bucky says, looking down at his hands. "Course I did. You always drew pretty girls for me."  
  
Steve doesn't know what to say to that, and looks out the window instead, sipping his espresso, until Sam clears his throat and says, "Anyway. We've been trying to figure out how to spin you. I'm thinking P.O.W."  
  
"A former Soviet terrorist?" Bucky drums his fingers on the table. "Good luck."  
  
"You wouldn't be the first. Natasha's done a lot of the dirty work by releasing her history," Sam says.  
  
"I've –" Bucky begins, and bites his lip. "I've killed some popular people."  
  
"They don't need to know that. All they need to know is that you were tortured and brainwashed by HYDRA for seventy years, and it's a miracle that you're back. The only ones who know the truth are the ones who will be running from us."  
  
"Us?" Bucky asks.  
  
"Yeah. What do you think our mission is as soon as you get outta here?" Sam twirls his finger to indicate the room. "The three of us, maybe Natasha if she's not busy. And you know I hope she's not busy."  
  
"After finding you, our next mission was to track down all HYDRA's loose ends and stamp them out for good," Steve says. "I figured that's what you were doing when you got shot, and maybe...maybe you'd want to go with us?"  
  
"Yeah," Bucky says instantly. "Yeah, of course I do."  
  
"Good," Sam says, standing up with a brisk slap to the table. "Now I gotta go back to my real job. We can't all be professional superheroes. You two get to start training tomorrow. Not like either of you need it, physically, but I'll be there to test your _minds_."  
  
He waggles his fingers in Steve's face at the last word, pats him on the back, and leaves the coffee house whistling something that sounds suspiciously like "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" – officially Steve's least favorite song of the twentieth century, as they discovered while driving through Germany. As soon as Sam's out of sight, Steve's phone buzzes.  
  
 _w o w now i understand why u never had a girlfriebd_  
  
 _girlfriend. u know wht i meant._  
  
Steve texts back _I've had hundreds of girlfriebds_ before he pockets his phone. "Do you wanna go lose at Rummy again, or do you want to stay here and have a scone?"  
  
Bucky looks around, probably feeling the same weight of curious eyes that Steve feels, and says, "Rummy."  
  
"Yeah, let's get outta here," Steve agrees, and he's sure he's not imagining the way the whispering gets louder when the two of them walk toward the back exit.  
  
"Hey," Bucky says, catching Steve's arm the second the door closes behind them. "I didn't mean it, earlier. About the drawings."  
  
Steve shrugs. "It's all right, Buck."  
  
"No, it's not." He frowns. "I kept your letters on me because I read them every day, even when you were with me."  
  
"Oh," Steve says. Bucky's really close to him again, all of a sudden, and he thinks wildly that he could just dip his head down a little bit and kiss him right now, if he wanted.  
  
"When I started realizing who I was, I told myself I wasn't gonna let anybody tell me what to do anymore," Bucky says fiercely. "Nobody else dictates what I think, or what I want."  
  
"Oh," Steve says again, swallowing hard. He can't stop looking at Bucky's mouth. His heart is jumping fast, and he regrets the espresso. "I don't – what does that mean?"  
  
"It means," Bucky says, pulling away slightly with that grin that says he's got Steve's number and always has, "you missed me a lot. You were _very_ flattering."  
  
He remembers the heartsick ache of missing Bucky and being jealous of him at the same time, and flushes thinking of what kinds of things he must have written. "You know what? Just for that, I'm gonna make you watch the video for that country song," he says. "There's a girl running through a field in an American flag dress, waiting for her soldier."  
  
"Christ," Bucky mutters, pushing a hand through his hair and heading for the elevators.  
  
"Because he's gonna come home and _protect_ her, Buck," Steve says. "The way he _always_ does."  
  
Bucky's trying not to smile, walking fast to get away from him, and starts to jog when Steve catches up. "Stop," he laughs, running faster.  
  
"And _nothing's_ gonna keep him from taking care of her _ever again_ ," Steve goes on, clutching his heart as he races Bucky to the elevators. "He's sitting by a river that makes him think of all the times they went swimming down in Hackensack."  
  
"I'm gonna sue somebody. Those are my letters, that's my property," Bucky says, slapping the wall next to the elevator and laughing breathlessly. "People sue each other for that, right?"  
  
"I think your copyright ran out a few years ago." Steve almost continues teasing, but his favorite part of Bucky's letters – the way they all ended _Your boy Bucky_ – didn't end up in the song, of course. He hits the button for the elevator and when the doors open, Fury's standing there. He watches them impassively as they join him in the elevator, and they're silent for a few floors, although Bucky makes a face at him and Steve almost breaks. He has to clear his throat to stop himself from laughing.  
  
"Gentlemen," Fury says.  
  
"Director," Steve says, although he supposes Sam is right and Fury isn't a director of anything anymore.  
  
"Sleep well tonight." The elevator dings when they hit the fifth floor down and the two of them get out. Fury adds, as the doors slide shut, "You'll need plenty of energy tomorrow."  
  
"What did I say? That was ominous," Bucky says, although Steve notices he waits to say it until the elevator is well out of range.  
  
"He's not so bad, Fury," Steve says. "He has his fingers in about a million pies, but he'll do right by you if he trusts you."  
  
"Say I accept," Bucky says. "Say I actually do want to be an agent. Would he be my commander?"  
  
"Your boss, maybe. But you don't have a commander." Steve lets him go through the door to the observation room first. "You're in charge of you."  
  
"You think they're gonna have us spar against each other tomorrow or something?" he asks.  
  
"Maybe," Steve says. "It might be nice going up against someone who can match me. I usually have to take on six or seven people at once, and strangely, it's kinda hard to find volunteers."  
  
"Hm," Bucky says. The conversation seems to make him quiet and thoughtful, and he stays that way even through a few rounds of cards and half a season of the _Andy Griffith Show_. Natasha, Steve discovered, loves the _Andy Griffith Show_. She'll sit and watch it for hours, even if it's badly dubbed in Japanese. Steve thinks it's okay; Bucky doesn't seem to like older sitcoms much, and doesn't have any patience for slapstick. But he's content to sit on the couch with Steve, close but not quite touching. It makes Steve a little crazy and he wants to tell Bucky to just move on in, to put his arm around him and pull Bucky into his space. But this is the danger of being in a room with Bucky for too long: he starts to forget that there's seventy years between his Bucky and this one, who keeps his metal arm far, far away from Steve, and stays six inches to the left even though Steve knows he wants to be closer.  
  
"Anything on your mind?" Steve asks when they settle in for the night. Bucky's sitting on his bed, staring into the distance. His hair sticks up a little on the side and he looks about sixteen again, like Steve just came over to spend the night and it's 1933 and his sisters are in the kitchen laughing with their mother. They doted on Bucky, all of them, the oldest and the only boy, spoiled him rotten and played tricks on him and made him sample their cooking experiments. Steve liked and was comfortable with the Barnes girls – or as comfortable as he could ever be – and when he looked them up to see if any of them were still alive, he was horrified to read that Nina, the youngest, had been shot and killed right there in the middle of their old street in 1948. She ran toward the man because he looked like her brother, who had died in the war, her mother was quoted as saying in the little one-column clipping Steve had found. The police had no suspects and the case was unsolved.  
  
"No, I'm just – you know, thinking about everything Agent Wilson said today," Bucky says. Then he smirks. "Did you know there's a Steve Rogers Day in Sheridan, Wyoming?"  
  
"Good _night_ ," Steve says, making a vow to never tell him about the Captain America ride at Disney Land.  
  
*  
  
When he wakes up, the light is wrong. It's Bucky, he realizes quickly, hovering over him and blocking the light from the bathroom before he straddles Steve at the hips.  
  
"Wh– " he gets out before Bucky's hands go up under his shirt and start patting him down. He's about to throw Bucky off, but when he looks up he sees Bucky's a mess, swollen eyes and tragic, trembling mouth. He mutters in Russian, frantically scrabbling his fingers over Steve's chest and shoulders and head. The metal isn't quite as warm as his skin and he shivers, putting his hands over Bucky's.  
  
"Bucky," he says softly, "come on, buddy, it's okay. I'm okay."  
  
Bucky shakes him off and continues to talk to himself, and Steve realizes he knows what Bucky's saying – _I don't know, I don't know_ , over and over again – it's one of the only phrases Steve remembers from the time he and Natasha were stuck in an elevator shaft, waiting to extract Barton from a hotel room in Singapore, and she tried to teach him some Russian.  
  
"Captain Rogers, what is your status?" Rodriguez asks over the comm.  
  
"Yeah, it's fine, don't worry," he says desperately. There's a little packet full of tiny darts strapped to the inside of the band of his watch. He promised Fury he'd keep it there even if it seemed like Bucky wasn't a threat, although he knew he'd never use it. But Bucky is completely not here, not in this room, maybe not even in this century, and Steve is starting to think maybe the tranquilizer isn't a terrible idea after all.  
  
"Bucky," he hisses, and then louder, hating himself a little, "Sergeant Barnes, you'd better wake your ass up."  
  
It's a passable imitation of Colonel Phillips. Bucky hated him, and he wasn't too fond of Bucky either. Whenever they had to report to him, he'd be after Bucky the entire time, telling him _Sergeant Barnes, you should leave the talking to people smarter than you_ or _Sergeant Barnes, if I wanted strategy from the inside of a horse's ass, I'd call my brother-in-law_. The Commandos loved that there was one person Barnes couldn't charm, and delighted in coming up with elaborate Colonel Phillips insults. _Sergeant Barnes, if I wanted to see a lily white ass in broad daylight, I'd stand outside a Parisian whorehouse. Sergeant Barnes, you can sleep in late when the Captain makes an honest woman of you and you're a lady of leisure._ Bucky tolerated it, but not when they woke him up that way. Then he'd sulk like a kid all morning.  
  
It works – almost. Bucky straightens, his metal hand still propping himself up on Steve's chest. "Steve?"  
  
"Yeah, it's me, don't worry," Steve says. The metal hand is really close to his throat, and he's had enough experience with that combination to be wary.  
  
"You're – I didn't hurt you?"  
  
"No, I'm okay." He reaches out and carefully moves the hand down a little, then tries to disentangle the other one, which is buried in his hair. "You were just dreaming."  
  
"Yeah." Bucky's breath sobs in and out. "Dreamed I shot you. I shot you."  
  
"You didn't shoot me," Steve says, and doesn't add _not today_. "I'm okay, it's all right."  
  
Bucky shifts on top of him, heavy and warm. "Steve," he says, leaning down, " _Steve_ –"  
  
And he's kissing Steve suddenly, a sweet desperate kiss that has Steve tipping his head and kissing back before his mind catches up. He gasps into Bucky's mouth because god, that's what he tastes like – he's always wanted to know, always wanted to bite that lower lip and see what Bucky would do about it. As it turns out, it makes him shiver and press his hips down tight against Steve's, sliding against him with his breath hitching excitedly.  
  
"Hold on," Steve whispers against Bucky's lips, panting. "Stop, hold on."  
  
"Don't, _please_ ," Bucky says in a low voice, full of longing, and Steve wants more than anything to give into it, but he can't, not like this, not with at least three techs as witness and who knows how many more watching the feed later, and especially not with Bucky still halfway asleep.  
  
"I'm gonna – " He sits up and tries not to think about the fact that Bucky is in his lap. "Come on, Buck, you're gonna thank me for this in the morning."  
  
It takes a few minutes to guide Bucky back to his own bed, but once he gets there he curls up obediently and lets Steve pull the blanket up over him. He sighs, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," before he's asleep again. Steve, however, is done with sleep for the night.  
  
"If Fury asks," Steve says to the techs on his way out.  
  
"You went for a run," Rodriguez says, using the soothing voice people use when they talk to someone doing a crazy thing, which is understandable because Steve caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and he looks like a person who's about to do a crazy thing.  
  
"That'll work," he says, but he's not going for a run at 3:45 in the morning. He's going to get on his bike and drive around for a very long time, and he is not going to think about anything.


	4. Intrusion (part II)

There's one good thing about knowing Bucky almost his entire life: it's hard for things to stay awkward very long. When Steve gets back to the observation room at dawn, he and Bucky nod at each other sheepishly and Bucky waves at the bathroom as if to say _it's all yours_.  
  
"Agent Romanov wants you to meet her in the training room on level eight as soon as you're ready," Parker says as Steve's pulling on his t-shirt. He's getting more and more antsy about being in this room, enclosed and deep underground and, most importantly, watched all the time. Going back into the facility that morning had felt like turning himself into the police. Bucky doesn't seem to care much, although once Steve thinks about that for more than even a second his mind supplies the thought _he's used to enclosed spaces_ , and he has to sit down for a few minutes.  
  
When he comes out of the bathroom, he smiles and says, too brightly, "You ready?"  
  
Bucky nods, lets Steve steer him out of the room and toward the elevators in silence. He's pulled inward, thoughtful and withdrawn and, Steve notices, he looks exhausted. Steve suddenly wants, more than anything, to just take Bucky's hand and drag him out of this building, outside, out into the sunshine. The need takes him by force in a wave of desperation – he can practically see the two of them walking in the stiff, crisp early morning air, coffee in hand, sky above them.  
  
"I gotta get us outta here, Buck," he says wildly. The elevator is probably bugged and filmed and every other kind of recording Fury requires, but he doesn't care.  
  
Bucky looks at him like it's the first time he's even considered it. "You said the other day that you'd get us an apartment. Can you really do that?"  
  
"They can't stop me," Steve says, trying to breathe evenly. The elevator is making him even more uncomfortable. "I don't want you to be a fugitive, so I'm gonna try to play by Fury's rules since he doesn't seem to want you dead. But I think we have to speed up the schedule."  
  
"Why don't you go without me?" Bucky asks.  
  
"I'm not leaving you alone in here," he says, and Bucky's face softens into exasperation and affection.  
  
The elevator doors open to a long, brightly lit hallway. The design of the facility does help with the claustrophobia somewhat, he admits. Tony wouldn't let it look like just any old government building, all concrete and metal and flickering fluorescent lighting; everything is very white, and the ceilings are high, the light as close to natural as Stark technology can make it. Some hallways and rooms are lined with scenes of the outdoors – forests, mainly, or wide fields – but not this one. It still bothers him, the terrible brightness. He doesn't think he's ever going to be able to get rid of the blank fear, but putting his hand on Bucky helps.  
  
Beside him, Bucky looks pale in the wash of the hallway's light, eyes too big. Institutional, Steve thinks, overwhelmed again. He stops Bucky after only a few steps.  
  
"It's all right if you're nervous," Steve says. "But nobody's going to make you do anything you don't want to do. You don't have to spar."  
  
"That's the thing. I want to," Bucky says, biting his lip. He rotates the metal arm, grimacing, and it makes a static sound. "It feels good. Using the arm. I told you they programmed the pain out of it, but I didn't tell you how they did it."  
  
"So you're rewarded when you fight," Steve says softly. He keeps thinking he's got a handle on it, but he knows that there will always be one more detail, one more new cruel thing he learns. In the face of it, he can't stop himself from murmuring _hey_ , putting a hand on Bucky's shoulder and turning, pulling him close. He telegraphs his movements so Bucky can stop him if it's too much, but Bucky goes easily, almost eager, sliding his arms around Steve with a small contented sigh like he's been waiting for it. He feels thinner than he looks and has to tilt up a little instead of bending down the way he used to, but there's the same feeling Steve has always gotten from hugging him – beyond the surface comfort, beyond the luxury of touching him, there's a sense of total rightness he's never felt with anyone else. Not that he's had a lot of chances to compare, but he can't imagine another person giving him that same pure peace, the pleasure spreading along his skin, pleasure that's relief and excitement at the same time. Maybe it's the kind of thing that only comes about through long years of loving someone, but Steve suspects it's actually the kind of thing that rarely comes about at all.  
  
"I kissed you last night," Bucky says. He sounds more confused than upset about it.  
  
"You were having a nightmare, I think," Steve murmurs into his shoulder. They break apart, but not too far. Bucky's hands stay on Steve's sides like he doesn't want to stop touching.  
  
"I don't remember," Bucky says. The tips of his fingers move in small almost-ticklish circles on Steve's ribs, sending little waves of goosebumps all over his body. His nipples tighten almost painfully, and he shudders and leans his forehead against Bucky's for a second.  
  
"It's all right." He takes a deep breath, knowing his face is bright red, and says, "Uh. I know it's probably the least of your concerns right now, but."  
  
A small, sly smile appears at the edges of Bucky's lips. "I have a lot of concerns," he says.  
  
"Well – yeah." Bright, bright red. All the way down his front. He thinks he's blushing on his knees. Bucky's flat-out grinning and Steve knows he's being teased, but he's not sure which direction the teasing is coming from. "That thing you said about going after what you want. What was that about?"  
  
Bucky looks up at him, suddenly serious. "I'm really, really interested," he says solemnly, "in architecture."  
  
"Oh – well," Steve says, mortified, and pulls back. "That's gr –"  
  
"Stop, stop," Bucky laughs, reeling him back in. "God, your face. You gotta know I was talking about you."  
  
Steve blows out a hard, relieved breath, then pushes Bucky's shoulder. "Don't do that. You know I'm terrible at this kinda thing."  
  
"So let me do it instead," Bucky says. He's leaned back against the wall, Steve notices suddenly, and Steve has settled in close, standing almost between his legs, without realizing it. Bucky tilts his chin up, an invitation, and says, "Come on."  
  
Steve has already parted his lips and is leaning down when he remembers where exactly they are. "Not here," he says, but he keeps drawing closer to Bucky's mouth. "Not until we're alone."  
  
"Just a little one, though," Bucky murmurs, and Steve shudders, a sigh catching in his throat. "There aren't any cameras here. Nobody can see us."  
  
"I can, actually," Natasha says from the door to the training room. Steve tries to jerk away, but Bucky holds him firm and he's instantly grateful for it, because he's hard as a rock and his thin sweatpants don't hide anything. He puts his hands awkwardly on his hips instead, not quite touching Bucky. "Sorry to interrupt, but we've been waiting for a while."  
  
Bucky gives her the same kind of cheerful wave he'd give to Steve's mother right before they were about to go outside and play in the mud. "Hi. Bucky Barnes."  
  
"We've met." Even staring straight at the wall behind Bucky, Steve can tell Natasha's almost smiling. "Why don't you take a few minutes and then join us on the mats?"  
  
"Thanks," Steve chokes out, and as soon as the door swings shut behind her he pulls away from Bucky fast, rubbing his hands over his face. Bucky stays against the wall, laughing like they didn't just get caught petting – _petting_ – in a SHIELD facility.  
  
"Hey," Bucky says, tugging his arm gently. When he's close enough Bucky stretches and catches his lips in a kiss, and Steve goes down so easy, forgetting about Natasha, forgetting where they are, forgetting to care about anything else at all except Bucky's mouth. Bucky kisses slow, drawn out, lips soft. Steve's only had three kisses in his entire life, four if the previous night counts at all, and he's not prepared for the drugging, undertow rush that pulls him outside himself as soon as Bucky opens up to him. Needing to touch but not entirely sure what to do, he slides his fingers over the back of Bucky's neck and into his hair. Bucky shivers with a soft, breathless moan and pulls away for a moment, looking dazed, before going right back in. It's so warm – despite the attempts at natural light, the facility is very cold, but Steve is warm here, all the way through, in a way unlike anything he's ever known. He'd thought he had a good idea of what he was missing, but this is so much more – he's missed so much, he realizes, and when Bucky pulls away again he feels absurdly panicked.  
  
"Sorry, that got out of hand," Bucky sighs, and bites Steve's lip gently. "I've wanted to do that since I was thirteen."  
  
"Thirteen?" Steve says inanely. He can't think around the thick, heavy ache between his legs, and yet again he entertains the idea of just breaking out of the facility and going anywhere, finding a quiet room far, far away from SHIELD and hiding there in peace and kissing Bucky forever.  
  
"You just, you stay right over there for a second." Bucky pushes at him until he's on the other side of the hallway before he knows what's happening. "And don't look at me like that or I'm gonna kiss you again."  
  
Thinking about the ice, suffocating in the dark, doesn't have quite the same effect it usually does, but it's enough to calm him down after a minute or so. He catches one glimpse of Bucky's flushed face and remembers the noise he made when Steve touched him, and then he has to turn away and imagine Fury stepping out of the elevator and seeing him like this. That does the trick, and when he turns around again Bucky gestures toward the doors to the training room.  
  
"You good?" Bucky asks, guiding him down the hall with a hand on his back.  
  
"Yeah," Steve says. His voice is hoarse, too low. "You?"  
  
Bucky smiles at him like he's done something really wonderful, and Steve's heart jumps at the uncomplicated happiness on his face. "The best. You have no idea."  
  
*  
  
The last time Steve was in the training room, it was still under construction. Steve's amused to note that it's almost exactly like the one in Stark Tower, but much taller to accommodate a climbing wall, ropes, and a complex set of flying rings. There are a few agents working out on the machines, separated from the mats by a glass wall. Steve can see Sharon, his former neighbor, and raises a hand. She's CIA now, Natasha said. He's not sure if he'll ever get over being irritated by her babysitting him, but she seems a little abashed by it every time she sees him and that helps.  
  
Natasha is standing on the far end of the training room, talking to twenty or so agents in black SHIELD exercise gear like Bucky's. Steve has trained with most of them before – Kessler, on the right, is the Brazilian jiu-jitsu expert he worked with for a few months, and he started doing freerunning with Gerard and Cimino right after the Chitauri incident. Seaver and Warren used to spar regularly with him and Rumlow, and Steve can see that they want to say something to him about it. He doesn't let them, introducing the agents to Bucky before anyone gets too talkative.  
  
Bucky, for his part, smiles close-mouthed and keeps his arms crossed over his chest. He killed quite a few of these agents' friends and coworkers, and that awareness is definitely in the room. But they look to Steve to see how he handles Bucky, and the tension eases when he says, "Bucky used to protect me when I was a little guy getting into fights in back alleys." It's not like they don't know the story, but they seem to need a reminder that this is Sergeant Bucky Barnes, a man whose action figure most of them likely played with as children.  
  
"All right," Natasha says, pointing to the mats. "Half of you with Barnes alone first, then everyone with Rogers and Barnes together, then Rogers and Barnes against each other."  
  
She gives Bucky a slightly skeptical up-and-down look and says something softly to him in Russian, something that makes him smile a little, before she walks to the side of the sparring mats.  
  
"What did she say?" Steve asks.  
  
"She said not to worry, she can sedate me right away if anything goes wrong," he says. Steve wants to protest, but Bucky looks relieved for a moment before looking around the room skittishly, like he's assessing escape routes. He swings his left arm around, eyebrows drawing together. It's a look Steve remembers from the war: this is Sergeant Barnes, getting ready to do battle. As long as there's no Winter Soldier there, Steve isn't worried, but he can see Bucky's tense and slides a hand down his back – because he can, if for no other reason – and leans in close.  
  
"Since you were thirteen, huh?" he murmurs, to see Bucky smile, eyes softening.  
  
"Eleven, actually," he replies with a sheepish little one-armed shrug, heading for the mats.  
  
From what Steve's seen of Bucky's fighting style, he relies on sheer brute strength and stamina. He's heavy, unstoppable except by someone like Steve, who is stronger and more agile. But as the ten agents surrounding him move in and immediately out of their fighting stance, Bucky bounces on the balls of his feet and, bracing himself on the shoulder of the first one who gets too close, kicks out once, twice, in a wide circle and drops two of them before the others can even react, then flips himself up onto the agent's shoulders and uses him as an anchor so he can arch back and take out Kessler and Gerard. It's like watching a ballet, Steve thinks, following the smooth arc of Bucky's body and the graceful twist of his legs. He isn't even using his left arm.  
  
"Look at him go," Steve mutters without meaning to, swallowing hard.  
  
"Jesus," Natasha says. "You sound like a sex hotline. Tone it down, Rogers."  
  
"You tone it down," he says, and he's not sure what a sex hotline is, but he's breathing kind of heavily and maybe he's imagining Bucky's thighs around his waist, so she's probably got a point.  
  
None of the agents are new to sparring with supersoldiers, and they do their best, but by the time Natasha calls it they've all hit the mats five or six times, and they're looking pretty torn up. She tells them to take twenty and get bandaged up if they need to, and Bucky jogs over to Steve looking sweaty and pleased with himself, t-shirt clinging, muscles glistening.  
  
"Hi," Steve breathes, handing him a towel. Natasha raises an eyebrow at him and he clears his throat. "Uh. That was amazing."  
  
"They had to let me out for a couple of weeks before every mission to do upgrades and test my reflexes," Bucky says, wiping his face. "And in between, I'd just train and fight."  
  
"How often did that happen?" Natasha asks.  
  
"What, the missions? I guess three or four times a year," he says, and she gives him a look Steve can't categorize. She admires him – or the Winter Soldier, Steve guesses – in a strange way, the way she'd admire an equal. But there's something else there, something that has to do with her reluctance to be around Bucky. Steve chalked it up to several different things before deciding it was just one of those things he doesn't understand about Natasha, but he doesn't think that's all there is to it.  
  
"You're up," she says, tapping Steve's shoulder. "Let's see how you two fight together."  
  
It should be easy; it's hardly their first fight. There was Brooklyn, of course, but that was almost always Bucky throwing punches while trying to push Steve behind him. During the war Bucky had his gun and Steve his shield, but once in a while there was a good old brawl and they found an easy rhythm between the two of them. But it's not the same, and he's not sure why until all twenty or so agents come at them and he realizes he doesn't know how Bucky moves anymore, not the way he used to. The rhythm they had is gone and when he expects Bucky to move right to take out one agent, he swings left and twists himself around in ways Steve didn't know he could do. It takes time for him to adjust, extra seconds he doesn't have, and he finds himself getting hit while he watches for Bucky, listening for him, turning to see what he's doing.   
  
Only five minutes in, he's been sucker punched three times and Agent March, who is five-two and likes to tell him he's too fat for capoeira, gets him in the back of both knees and brings him down on all fours. It's been a long time since he went down while sparring, and he can hear a few noises of surprise before Gerard slides in and pops him right in the face. When he staggers to his feet to start in on him – it was a good hit and Gerard never holds back, but Steve can go all day – something streaks past him and Bucky leaps on Gerard like he's the only one in the room. Gerard could hold his own against Bucky without the metal arm, but he's using it now, and when he turns Steve sees his eyes are flat. Not quite the Winter Soldier, and Steve would like to say not quite Bucky either, but the truth is Bucky looked like that sometimes after Zola's factory, too.  
  
"Hey, it's all right," Steve intends to say, but Gerard grabs Bucky's left arm as he's turning away. Steve only has time to think _well, that's a terrible idea_ before it slips from Gerard's grasp and, with all the momentum of Bucky's anger behind it, clocks Steve right in the chin. The last thing he sees are the metal beams in the ceiling, and he's out before he even hits the mat.  
  
*  
  
"– I'd find you here. You broke out pretty fast."  
  
Natasha's voice. Every emphasized syllable drives a tiny spike of pain into his head. In a hospital, he thinks. He tries to open his eyes, but the effort almost makes him cry out.  
  
"Did you think those restraints could really keep me?" Bucky asks.  
  
"No." The click of Natasha's boots. It's like being stabbed. Has he been stabbed? He thinks he has, but then the thought is gone and it hurts too much to hold onto it. "I didn't make them very tight. I know you're not a threat to him. Not because of that, anyway."  
  
"That's what Fury's been looking for, isn't it," Bucky says. "Whether Steve is a trigger or not. I guess he found out."  
  
"We were looking for that, yes," Natasha says. "And now we know we're never going to be able to deprogram you completely."  
  
"You think I'm always going to be someone else's weapon." Bucky sounds defeated.  
  
"This isn't HYDRA's programming," Natasha says. "It's yours. It's so ingrained in you to protect him that you'll always be a weapon someone can use against him."  
  
Bucky makes a scoffing noise, and Steve knows what his face looks like without seeing it – lips twisted in something between a smirk and a contemptuous smile, eyes lazy. His face is so expressive, Steve could watch him talk all day. How long, Steve wonders dreamily around the pounding in his head, did it take to cut that out of him? How long before he walked around with that dead man's face?  
  
"Loving someone, that's a special kind of brainwashing." There's a soft screech, a chair being pulled across the floor, and the noise cuts through him. "It makes your decisions for you. Fury wants the two of you to be a team. I don't. It's nothing personal, but you're his weakness, Sergeant Barnes. If it came down to saving you or the rest of the world, he'd choose you."  
  
"I know you've been observing me – us," Bucky says. "From afar. Probably didn't wanna let Steve know you were doing it. But if that's all you're seeing, you haven't been looking."  
  
Silence. Steve wants to move, but it seems like an impossible effort, and he wants them to keep talking.  
  
"He ever tell you about when we were younger?"  
  
"Not really," Natasha says, although Steve has, plenty.  
  
"He never could stand bullies. And he's stubborn as hell, so you can't talk him out of fighting. All you can do is bandage him up when he's done." It sounds like Bucky's smiling. "The hell of it is, he's usually right, and you'd do it too if you were brave enough. That's how it always is. He points me in the right direction, and I make sure he doesn't go off harebrained. Or if I can't do that, I keep him safe. That'll happen whether –"  
  
Steve loses the thread of the conversation, drifting off again no matter how hard he tries to stay awake.  
  
"– or not, even if you don't approve –"  
  
But he's gone. No pain and no dreams.  
  
*  
  
He slides back into consciousness in a panic, certain he's missed something vital. He bolts upright, throwing his hands out to catch himself when his vision goes black. For a second he can't tell which way is up and gags, nauseated, until a warm hand on his back rights him.  
  
"No, hold on, you're gonna hurt yourself," Bucky says, and it's 1927 and he's got pneumonia and Bucky's sitting on his bed, trying to cheer him up, and he whimpers a little bit because he doesn't want to lie down again but everything keeps tipping. He got a big bumblebee marble for his birthday and he wants to go outside and play with it, but the doctor said he has to be in bed for at least another week. He squeezes his eyes shut, refusing to move, and clutches Bucky.  
  
"Come on, pal, I'll get in with you," Bucky whispers, and Steve's all right with that because Bucky makes up the best stories, even though Steve feels guilty for making him stay inside on a day like this.  
  
"You should go outside and play," he says.  
  
Bucky slides into the bed beside him. "I guess I rang your bell pretty hard," he says, gently pulling Steve down with him. Steve curls up along his side and rests his head on Bucky's shoulder, sighing when the nausea subsides. What was he saying? Was he talking about marbles?  
  
"My head hurts," he says.  
  
"Poor guy," Bucky murmurs, "poor Steve, god, I'm sorry."  
  
Bucky shifts on the bed so he can slip both arms around him, rubbing his back. It's probably because he feels so awful, but for once he doesn't mind being fussed over and presses his face against Bucky's neck. When the metal of Bucky's hand touches his hot skin he moans, and Bucky yanks the hand away.  
  
"Don't," Steve mumbles. "It feels nice."  
  
He can feel Bucky's heartbeat speed up, and then the slight, gentle touch of metal on the nape of his neck. He moans again, long and drawn out, when the metal fingers stroke the back of his head.  
  
"You don't have to be afraid to touch me with it," he sighs.  
  
"I hurt you," Bucky says softly.  
  
Steve waves a hand. "Accident," he says. "You'd never hurt me. Not my Bucky."  
  
Bucky pulls him close, silent, and Steve falls asleep to the slow, steady in-and-out of his breath.  
  
*  
  
When he wakes up the third time, the pain is gone. He's got his face mashed up against Bucky's chest, sweatshirt in his mouth, and when he lifts his head Bucky jerks under him before he seems to realize there's no threat. They're in the cold medical bay, alone, completely dark but for the lamp above his bed. Steve doesn't think he's ever seen the bay empty before. There are always a few agents being treated, either pre- or post-mission. Once when he walked past the bay, one of the beds appeared to be occupied by a tree. But it's silent now outside the curtain around his bed. He doesn't wear a watch while he's sparring, and it's impossible to tell what time it is otherwise.  
  
"I dunno, probably been about six hours. They came in and took about a million scans while you were out," Bucky says when he asks, stretching. "There'll be more later. I think we're Dr. Shannen's pet project."  
  
Steve gently flexes his jaw and finds no tenderness there. "I'm pretty sure you broke something. If that healed in six hours, I can't exactly blame her."  
  
Bucky's face crumples in misery. "I'm sorry," he says softly, reaching for Steve's hand.  
  
"You know it wasn't your fault," Steve says, running a thumb over his knuckles. "They tied you up, huh?"  
  
Bucky nods. "At the other end of the bay. Just a formality."  
  
"Natasha said she knew you weren't a threat." Steve puts his head back down on Bucky's chest, wanting the warmth and needing to listen to the regular, solid noise of his heart. "I heard you talking earlier."  
  
"Yeah? What all did you hear?" Bucky asks.  
  
"Natasha said you'd never be completely deprogrammed," he says.  
  
"She's right." There's a hard edge to the words. "If HYDRA couldn't do it in seventy years, I don't know what could."  
  
"I read your file," Steve admits. He wishes he hadn't. Nothing about Bucky has belonged to himself for such a long time – not his body, not his mind, not his experiences. Steve knows he shouldn't have access to all that pain and shame and degradation. In a way, it makes him complicit in it.  
  
"Then you know everything," Bucky says, and Steve is glad he can't see Bucky's face. "You know all the things I've done."  
  
"I know it took them years to get through to you. I know how brave you were," Steve says. His breath is already getting unsteady; he's not sure if he can talk about this, but he supposes it only matters whether Bucky can do it.  
  
"It did take them a long time," Bucky says, "the scientists. Now that I remember everything, I can kinda...watch how they did it. I knew if I was gonna get through it, I had to hold onto something, like a talisman. We went to see _Robin Hood_ , remember, and you bought my ticket for me, like I was your girl. I played like I was offended, but I loved it. I'd think about sitting next to you in the theater and how you'd get so caught up in the movie, you'd jump whenever something big happened. And I held onto that memory, I held onto it so tight that even when I didn't remember you, I'd find myself wandering over to the theater after a mission to see if they were playing _Robin Hood_."  
  
His voice is far-away and slightly baffled, as if he's recalling a dream.  
  
"Whenever they woke me up, I'd have healed up a little, and they'd ask me if I knew Steve Rogers – and I always did, even if it was just something small, maybe I'd remember your shield or your middle name and they'd have to work on me again. They tried, they really tried to make you the same as everybody else. I looked at Nina, I looked my own sister right in the eye and I didn't even know her, but not you. Whatever they were trying to get me to do, it wouldn't take because I had to protect Steve. Protect...you. I guess you stopped needing that, or maybe you never really did, but I did it my whole life, you know? I couldn't shake it."  
  
Steve opens his mouth to say something, but finds that there are no words he can say, nothing that can do a damn thing. He turns his face into Bucky's shoulder instead with a horrible choked-off noise, and it seems to startle Bucky out of wherever he's gone.  
  
"Hey," he says, shaking Steve a little. "Feeling like I do about you, pal, that saved me. They tried so hard to burn you outta me, and you burned them out instead."  
  
Steve's entire body is stiff and he bites his lip hard, fierce in his desperation not to cry, but when Bucky tightens his arms around him he's gone anyway. He tries to pull away, but Bucky holds him fast and he gives in. There's something about the giving in that's almost enjoyable, the way relief from pain can feel like pleasure. Each sweep of Bucky's hand unwinds a tight string inside him. He didn't even know they were there until right this second, pulled so hard they're about to snap. Bucky murmurs _it's okay, it's all right_ , and Steve feels like he's breaking apart. How has this been inside him and he hasn't known, all this time? It's not like he hasn't grieved, but this isn't grief – or if it is, it's so large he can't believe there was a space inside him to contain it. He's trying to be quiet about it, but thinks he could probably scream if he let himself. As it is, he cries in a way he hasn't since his mother died. He did it alone then, wouldn't let Bucky see him, and he'd rather be alone now but this is unstoppable, this strange high tide of guilt.  
  
"I was so stupid," he gasps into Bucky's shoulder when he can speak again, his voice thick and miserable. "I promised myself, after I was done with that mission I was gonna go back and get your body so you could be shipped home. I was afraid – god, I couldn't stand to think what you'd look like after a fall like that, but I wasn't gonna let anybody else do it. I didn't ask anyone to do it for me in case I didn't make it back, cause it was my job. If I had, if they'd gone to find you –"  
  
"They couldn't have done anything for me," Bucky says. His hands are so gentle. Steve finds it hard to believe these are the same hands that almost killed him.  
  
"I could have. I could have come after you instead of running off like I did."  
  
"And if you'd done that, thousands of other people would have died instead. You gotta stop this, Steve." Bucky tugs lightly on his hair. "We never had any good options."  
  
"But," he says, and he's not sure what he's going to say after that.  
  
"And I hate it," Bucky continues, "knowing that whenever you look at me you're thinking about how you failed."  
  
Steve shakes his head. "I don't."  
  
"Yeah? So what do you think about?"  
  
"I think about – how much I missed you," he says, and he's hit by one of those moments where he can't believe Bucky's really here, so well-loved and so impossibly alive. "How glad I am that you're with me. How much it hurt you to get here."  
  
"It hurt, yeah," Bucky says. "And this, all this, it's rough. But look, as long as I got you, I think I could probably handle anything."  
  
"You know you always got me." Bucky's sweatshirt is soggy under his face. He has no intention of leaving this bed for a while, so he lifts his head and lets Bucky wriggle around to peel it off.  
  
"You're a mess, c'mere," Bucky says, patting his damp face with one of the sleeves. It feels like he's sixteen and Bucky's fixing him up after a fight, and apparently Bucky thinks the same, because he turns Steve's head to the side a little to check. "Just a bruise. Anybody else would be out of commission for a month. You went down like a sack of bricks."  
  
"Yeah, well, maybe you're just not as strong as you think you are," Steve says, settling back down again. He draws himself in close to Bucky and realizes that what he's really trying to do is make himself smaller, so Bucky can wrap around him. He wishes he'd appreciated back then how safe Bucky made him feel, how well Bucky took care of him despite the fact that he shrugged it off at every turn. He didn't like being coddled then and the idea of it still makes him uncomfortable, but the reality of it – held tight, warm, Bucky's hands on him – it doesn't feel like being coddled, like Bucky thinks he's weak. It feels like there's something in him that can relax for the first time.  
  
"All I ever wanted was this," Bucky says after they've been quiet for a long time. His metal hand is still drifting over Steve's skin, his other hand running idly through his hair, and Steve is dozing.  
  
"This?" he asks.  
  
"Not _this_. Obviously. But you know – you and me together, me taking care of you, you taking care of me," Bucky says. "If I coulda kept you healthy, I'd have stayed like we were in Brooklyn, before the war, forever."  
  
"We couldn't have stayed like that," Steve says.  
  
"Why not?" He used to say that in the old days, when Steve talked about growing up and getting married. _We can't be kids forever_ , Steve would say, and Bucky would smile lazily over his book and say _Why not?_  
  
"I wanted you too much," Steve says, quietly. He can say this here, now, with no one listening but Bucky. "I couldn't have been satisfied with that. Could you?"  
  
Bucky's quiet for a while. "No," he says finally. "I knew someday there'd be a girl who wasn't blind, and she'd get you. Like Peggy did. And I'd be best man at your wedding, and end up being Uncle Bucky."  
  
"It didn't have to be like that. If you'd said something – you had to at least know I'd have given it a shot, just because it was you." Steve doesn't say anything about Peggy. Bucky's words are so close to what he dreamed of having after the war: his best girl and his favorite guy, close to him forever.  
  
"Come on, Steve, you're a marriage-and-kids kinda guy. You always were." Bucky sounds fond, not bitter, but Steve can't help but feel he's been underestimated.  
  
"I'm a Bucky Barnes kinda guy," he says.  
  
"Big talker."  
  
They hear the footsteps at the same time and pull away from each other fast. Bucky's in one of the chairs beside Steve's bed before Steve even registers Sam's loping stroll. Sam's been in the facility a few times before while Fury was courting him, wandered around and made fun of Tony's taste, looked in on Bucky while he was still the only one in the observation room. Still, it's strange to see him here in an official capacity. Sam's always seemed to belong to what little life Steve has outside this.  
  
"Gentlemen," he says, pulling back the curtain and taking in the scene: Steve on the hospital bed, knees drawn up to his chest, holding onto Bucky's sweatshirt, Bucky in the chair looking sulky.  
  
"So," Steve says, wincing as he remembers Sam was evaluating them today. "How'd we do?"  
  
"Oh, you all are the talk of the town," Sam says, pulling up a chair and propping his feet up on the end of Steve's bed. "I'm gonna be real with you though, you did better than I thought you would."  
  
"I broke his jaw," Bucky says flatly.  
  
"Yeah, there are some issues, but I gotta admit part of me thought you might try to kill him, so on balance, we're doing pretty good," Sam says. "How'd it happen?"  
  
"I saw Steve was down, and that guy," Bucky begins, turning to Steve.  
  
"Gerard," Steve says.  
  
"Gerard was on him. I guess I got a little carried away." He shrugs uneasily.  
  
"You were protecting him," Sam says. It's gentle, no judgment. He turns to Steve. "What about you? Out there fighting like a drunk giraffe."  
  
"I was distracted," Steve mumbles. Sam raises his eyebrows, motioning for him to go on. "I kept...looking to see where Bucky was."  
  
"I used to see this problem a lot," Sam says. "One person gets injured and the dynamic changes, falls apart. You don't trust your wingman in combat and things go bad fast."  
  
"That's not it at all," Steve says, looking at Bucky's stricken face. "Bucky, that's not it. I trust you."  
  
"Yeah, but you don't trust each other to take care of yourselves. If you're partners, you gotta know that he doesn't need you protecting him all the time." Bucky opens his mouth, looking furious, but Sam cuts him off. "And if you think I don't know how much trouble he can get himself into, let me remind you I've known him for longer than two minutes. I also know that he can get himself out of trouble, and if he can't, he'll ask for my help. And you," he continues, pointing at Steve, "your boy doesn't need a babysitter."  
  
Sam sighs. "You're probably the strongest people on the planet and you treat each other like china. And that's beautiful, man, I wanna see that movie on Valentine's Day, but you can't be partners if you're all messed up about each other like this. You can't even spar against him, can you?"  
  
Bucky blanches, breath shuddering. His arm flexes, and the plates shift around. " _No_ ," he snaps. "I'm not gonna be forced to hurt him ever again."  
  
Sam nods. "I get it," he says, "but sparring is how you learn how to move together and not get each other hurt. It's a dance where nobody leads. The day you two can go up against each other with no incidents, I'll recommend you both for active duty as partners. I think we can get there. We're gonna take it slow, though."  
  
He stands up to go, and Steve blurts out, "I gotta get out of here. _We_. We gotta get out of here. When can we leave?"  
  
"Natasha and I both think Barnes isn't a threat," Sam says. "Trust me on this, you're still gonna end up spending half your time here, so you might not even want to leave. But...you should start looking at real estate." He pulls back the curtain and gives Steve a knowing look. "Now get all up in his lap like you were before I got here. I know you want to."  
  
"Out," Steve says, throwing the sweatshirt at him, but as soon as the bay is empty again Bucky climbs back into the bed with him.

"I don't know if I can do this," Bucky says desperately, running his fingertips over Steve's jaw. "Whenever I even think about us fighting each other, I'm on that ship again and I just see your face, I hurt your face so bad. I can't do this."

"We can do it," Steve says, but he's not entirely sure they can. "But Buck, all that matters to me is getting you out. We'll worry about the rest later."

"You really think they're going to let me go," Bucky says, almost indulgently, and Steve realizes suddenly that no matter what he says, Bucky doesn't believe he's ever really going to make it out of this facility. Steve remembers Natasha's warning about the guilt, and wonders if this is what Bucky thinks is his punishment: he expects to be here the rest of his life.

"Do you want to leave?" Steve asks slowly. "Do you think you should be allowed?"

"I just don't think it's gonna happen," Bucky says. "You all keep saying it, but why would they let me go? Why wouldn't they put me in prison, or just keep me in a lab?"

"No," Steve says, "no more labs. No prison."

"I belong there, though," Bucky says softly, looking lost. "I know why they want me to be an agent. I'm good at that, I can track down HYDRA for them. But I don't know why they'd just..."

Steve lays back against the pillows and pulls Bucky with him, holding onto him tight. "Just trust me," he says, and doesn't know what to say beyond that.


	5. Transition

"Stop, stop," he says, holding his hands up. "I can't."  
  
He's breathing so hard he can hear it whistling. This, five minutes of dancing around Bucky and trying to find a way to start grappling with him on the mats, is already too much. The second Bucky grabbed his wrist, they both jumped away from each other like scalded cats, and now they keep getting close and tapping at each other cautiously.

“Eventually one of you will fall asleep and the other will win by default,” Natasha says. She’s standing on the edge of the mats, arms crossed. “All right. Why don’t you start out already in position and try to break free.”

She moves them carefully, Bucky’s arm around Steve’s neck, Steve kneeling. When she says, “Go,” he feels Bucky tense, arm tightening against his throat, but Bucky releases him the instant he draws in a labored breath.

“It sounds like he can’t breathe,” Bucky says, wiping his forehead with a shaking hand.

“But you know he can,” Natasha says, quiet but implacable. “He can hold his breath as long as he needs to.”

“I don’t want to know how long he can hold his breath because I’m choking him,” Bucky says, voice low and deadly.

He turns abruptly and stalks off the mats, undoing and redoing the tape on his hands. The way he walks, the rough, measured pace, is too much like the Winter Soldier for Steve’s comfort, but he goes to follow anyway until Natasha holds his arm. “Get lost, Rogers,” she says, stretching until he can hear her back pop. “Sergeant Barnes and I need some time alone.”

He doesn’t get lost. Instead, he watches from the training room with the lights turned off. He can’t hear what Natasha says to Bucky after she takes off her shoes and her hooded sweatshirt, but Bucky responds with a jerk of his chin upward, angry and arrogant, and oh, Steve knows that look, knows it and hates it and loves it. In the old days Bucky’s temper was pretty even, and the only time Steve could really get him going was if he went beyond reckless and into self-destructive. They bickered more than they ever really fought, and even then it was a quick snap and they’d both feel terrible and make up fast. But once in a while the two of them really tore it up – the time, for example, that Steve made the mistake of mentioning he’d been thinking about going overseas in someone else’s place – and whenever he was pushed into being really mad, Bucky got like this. He could put it on like a suit, superior and belligerent, so convinced he was right and Steve was wrong that it always drove Steve even farther toward whatever Bucky didn’t want him to do. Bucky was always the one who came around eventually because either Steve would succeed and Bucky would grudgingly apologize, or Steve would fail and sulk until Bucky thumped him on the back and took him out to cheer him up. That time in particular (the time Steve said, “What if I switched, you know? With George Curtis? His wife’s pregnant, he doesn’t want to go –” and Bucky swung around with his hands balled up into fists and said, _“What the hell is wrong with you?”_ so furious that Steve thought Bucky might actually hit him), was the only time Steve gave in first. After Bucky had avoided him for three days, all his anger finally collapsed and he crept onto the foot of Bucky’s bed far too late on a fall night, the cold wet air seeping in around the windows, and told the unyielding line of Bucky’s back that he was right, that it would be a terrible idea anyway. Bucky sat up, pulled him into a rough hug, and said, “You gotta stop being so stupid, okay?” and Steve would have bristled at that but for the sheer desperation he felt coming off Bucky in waves.

Natasha moves onto the mat with her careful coiled stance. He likes to watch her train, always so graceful and then so abrupt when she goes for the kill. He had a few misguided ideas about fighting against women after he woke up from the ice, but those were kicked out of him early and they’re not why he doesn’t usually like to spar with Natasha. He doesn’t like it because he cares about her, and tells her so no matter how much it makes her stare at him and say, without any expression in her face or voice, “That’s really sweet, Steve. Now try to punch me in the face.” And because he hears Peggy in his ear in those moments and knows what she’d have to say about it, he trains with Natasha sometimes anyway. He knows she can take it, which is why he’s definitely not fidgeting like a little kid waiting for them to just hurry up and get it over with already so he can take them to medical.

Natasha comes at Bucky lightning-fast and it’s clear Bucky isn’t expecting it, but he regroups with a speed that has to be from the serum and they go after each other like – like dancers, Steve thinks. Natasha knows his moves, and he knows hers. They drop down and sweep at the same time, bounce up and kick in the same way, wrap their legs around each other the same way. She kicks him in the nose and he catches her leg before she slithers away from him and gets him in the kidney, and he takes her feet out from under her the moment they hit the floor. Steve can’t stop watching and suddenly he knows – he _knows_. He’s read her background and was aware there were gaps even in what she released to the public, but this –

Bucky catches Natasha’s foot when she tries to crawl onto his shoulders, and uses her momentum to send her spinning to the ground, facedown. Steve’s seen her do that move a hundred times and now he knows it was Bucky who taught it to her, both of them stolen, made into puppets, and locked away. Steve watches them spar for a few minutes more, perfectly in tandem, until he has to leave.

*

He’s in the coffee house a few hours later when Bucky slides into the chair across from him, looking more relaxed than Steve has seen him since he was sedated. He hasn’t shaved, but it’s never looked slovenly on him the way it does on Steve, who still isn’t entirely sure he can grow a beard. The light falls on him and Bucky turns into it with a little smile.

“I didn’t think you’d ever come up here on your own,” Steve says, pleased. He starts to smile but it’s a little unsteady, and he realizes he’s full of that same strange ache he felt when he first started reading Bucky’s files.

Bucky notices the smile and reaches across the table to touch his hand, just a soft swipe of one finger against another. “Hey.”

Steve slides his fingers into Bucky’s and holds on for a long moment before letting him go. His hand tingles a little and for a second he wonders if the pleasure he feels touching Bucky might be from the serum – but no, he’s held hands with Bucky before and it felt the same. Something about their skin touching is just – good. “Hey,” he says. “I was looking at houses.”

There's a prewar house for sale in Brooklyn Heights, although, looking at the listing, he wonders if you can even really call it a house anymore. He thinks he might vaguely remember it from the picture of the exterior with its strange, almost Grecian door. There’s something right about this place; he can see it through tiny five-year-old Steve Rogers’ eyes, looking at it with wonder and, even then, an artistic appreciation.    
  
"What do you think?" he asks, spinning the tablet so Bucky can see it. Bucky whistles.  
  
"Floyd Harriman lived there," he says. "I went out with his daughter Louise a couple times."  
  
Floyd Harriman owned almost all the buildings on their block, and a few restaurants too. "I know we were just gonna rent an apartment, but what if we bought this place?" Steve says. "It needs work."  
  
Bucky pulls the tablet closer to himself. "Needs new walls, floors, wiring, plumbing, fixtures, appliances, roof. So it has...a frame."  
  
"It also has new windows," Steve points out.  
  
Bucky rubs his bottom lip thoughtfully. "Do we have this kinda cash?"  
  
"We got enough." It's weird, after spending his entire life with not even enough money to buy food sometimes, to be in the position of having money practically thrown at him. Besides back pay, there are also years and years of endorsements. If he'd known SHIELD's lawyers were going to try to get him all seventy years' worth of royalties, even from old companies who had long since folded and been absorbed by other companies, he'd have stopped them. But they dumped the money on him in one giant sum six months after he was pulled from the ice, and the only thing he could do was donate most of it to veteran outreach programs.  
  
"We could work on it. Rebuild it," Bucky says under his breath, like he's talking to himself.

“You ever restored a house?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs. “It can’t be that difficult. There are TV shows about it. We have the internet.”

Steve isn’t sure he wants to learn how to fix wiring from youtube tutorials, but this is the first time he’s seen Bucky look really interested in anything other than Steve himself. “Let’s do it then.”

“Just like that?” Bucky asks.

“Just like that,” Steve says. “Well, probably not. I don’t know. Sam will probably have things to say about it.”  
  
Sam has many things to say about it. He shows up a little over an hour after Steve texts him _Do you have time to be judgmental about my choices?_ and he replies _judgmental and correct_.

“The fact that you’re thinking about the future is really encouraging,” he says, “but this thing is not a house, it’s a horror movie studio.”

“We’ve both seen worse,” Bucky says. His voice is soft and Steve can see that Sam is struggling between sympathy and actual revulsion.

“You can have nice things, you know,” he says. “Not everything made in 1914 is better than in 2014.”

“You don’t think there might be some kind of therapeutic value in restoring a broken down old place?” Bucky says with just the trace of a grin, and Steve realizes how completely he’s got Sam down.

“Fine.” Sam puts up his hands. “Fine, you win. But I’m not setting foot in that place until it’s been inspected by someone I’ve personally vetted. No, someone Stark’s personally vetted. Maybe I’ll make Stark do it himself.”

“No Starks allowed in my house,” Bucky says. “They blow things up.”

 _My house_ , Sam mouths to Steve when Bucky looks down at the tablet again, and Steve raises his eyebrows and smiles. He feels – god, he feels so good. He’s not sure he’s ever really felt like this in his life. The ache from earlier is still there and he knows he’s going to have to talk about it but sitting with Sam and Bucky and talking about their house, Bucky’s foot nudging against his under the table and the sun coming through the windows and warming his arm and the fake leather of the booth, he can’t help but feel like things are going to be all right. And that’s dangerous, god knows he can’t feel like this, but he’s going to let himself have it. Just for a little while.

*

A few weeks later, Steve learns that the effort to reintroduce Bucky to the world has already started.

“We have a meeting at Stark tower today,” Sam says. “Gotta talk about Operation Apple Pie, phase two.”

“Who came up with that name?” Bucky asks with a dubious look.

“I did, and it’s better than Operation Cherry Icee, so be grateful,” Sam says.

“I’d go with Operation Shut the Barnes Door, myself,” Natasha says, looking around the coffee house. “These agents are the worst actors I’ve ever seen. They get paid to sit here all day and they look like they’re drinking their coffee at attention.”

“What was phase one?” Steve asks.

“We hired someone to do a new documentary on the Howling Commandos and had all the history channels run the old ones for a few weeks,” Sam says. “Stark even got them to show the Christmas special from the eighties that they never aired again because the guy who played Cap got arrested for selling coke.”

Tony sends a car for them and Sam takes him up on it because, as he says, he’s never going to turn down rolling up to Stark Tower in a nice ride, but Steve wants to walk, and Bucky says he’ll walk too.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Steve says. “I just need to be outside for a little while. It might be easier for you to go with Sam.”

A little stubborn line appears between Bucky’s eyes. “I gotta get used to this,” he says. “Used to doing it as myself, I mean, and not mostly – someone else.”

Sam likes to make fun of him for wearing a baseball cap as a disguise, but he’s found that people leave him alone if he covers his hair and does something to hide the bulk of his shoulders. And Bucky has a way of modifying his walk and looking down so nobody looks twice at him – not that there’s a lot of looking twice anyway. Steve can never tell how much of the space he’s given is out of respect and how much is out of pure New Yorkedness. At any rate, his little stunted fantasies of walking through the city with Bucky in the autumn air aren’t exactly fulfilled, but once in a while he turns to look at Bucky, shuffling along slightly behind him in a pair of Steve’s jeans and one of his few nice sweaters (“This, this is ridiculous,” he’d muttered, sorting through Steve’s suitcase and finding all of Steve’s many hoodies and sneakers), and they grin at each other. Things change, Steve thinks, but not him and Bucky, not really.

Once settled into the fifteenth-floor meeting room, they wait nearly an hour before Tony shows up. The 3-D Stark Industries commercial that plays in the middle of the table entertains them for a while, but eventually they’re so bored they start comparing escape routes and criticizing each other’s methods. Sam is saying, “Man, you always pick diving through a window, there’s no originality there,” and Steve is sulking because he doesn’t need originality, thank you, when Tony finally walks in and the lights do a little flourish, followed by Banner, who is clearly in the middle of explaining to Tony why he really doesn’t need to be here.

“Hi, Steve, hi,” Banner says, and turns to Tony. “Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you dragging me away from the lab when it takes an hour to get in and out of the protective gear, but I don’t know how much help I’m going to be with social media.”

“If I have to hang out with these people and eat actual food, so do you,” Tony says. “Dr. Banner. Love of my research division. Please sit down. You’re making everyone nervous. There’s a cheese plate, have some Havarti.”

As he talks, Tony fiddles with his phone and the Stark Industries logo in the middle of the table is replaced with a picture of Steve and Bucky walking, not two hours ago. It’s to Bucky’s credit that the only thing visible of his face is the line of his jaw, but Steve might as well be glowing red.

“This showed up on Instagram about two hours ago with the caption ‘Who’s with Cap?’” Stark says, and Steve feels vaguely betrayed by his city. “The thing is, we’ve been suppressing any release of personal information about any of the Avengers since the beginning, so this is not a big deal. But as soon as you two buy your love shack things are gonna get funky, in a way I won’t be able to fix, so we need to control the message that goes out. There’s a new biography of Bucky Barnes being hastily written as I monologue, so the public will be primed to think very sentimental, very patriotic thoughts about you. After that, we can slowly start leaking some pictures and tweets ourselves, and the second – the absolute second – someone says you look like Bucky Barnes, we’ll go into phase three and release a statement. Yada yada, P.O.W., give him space during his delicate recovery period, etc. Phase four happens if and when anyone connects Bucky Barnes to the Winter Soldier – and they will, because that information is buried somewhere in those files you released. It took me a few days to find it and I was looking, but eventually some history PhD doing her dissertation on Cap is going to look too.”

As Tony speaks, the table’s hologram moves from the tweets (Steve catches one tagged #americanbooty and wants to hide under the table), to a schedule of Steve’s interviews over the next year, to the press statement, and finally to a series of pictures of Steve and Bucky, all taken today. Jesus, there’s one right outside the coffee house.

“And now that we’ve taken care of Operation Apple Pie,” Tony continues, the corner of his mouth lifting uncertainly, and Steve sits up and looks around the table. “Cap. This is kind of an intervention. What are you two doing with that house? Will you please just move into Stark Tower and get Fury off my back?”

“God, you’re all terrible people,” Steve mutters, sinking down into his seat, and not a single one of them has the grace to even look abashed except Banner. “Why do I keep trusting you?”

“We’re all speaking as people who don’t want you to get murdered by cockroaches,” Sam says. “But you know, on a professional level, I do think Stark Tower might serve as a good halfway point between the containment center and the outside world. Fury asked us to ask you to consider it.”

“I can protect you here,” Tony says, gesturing toward the pictures. “I can protect you from that.”

Steve looks at Natasha, who shrugs. “I was actually only here for Operation Apple Pie. Nobody told me about the intervention.”

“That’s because you make people make terrible decisions,” Tony says, pointing at her. “Look, you’d have everything you need here. Ask Bruce.”

“Now I understand why you made me come to this meeting,” Banner says. “But hey, he bribed me here with science. He’ll give you whatever you want and then drag you away when you’re trying to work.”

“I–” Tony begins.

“No,” Bucky says. They all turn to look at him and Steve gets the sense that he’s the only person in the room who actually remembered Bucky was there at all. “No, thank you. It’s good of you to offer, but we said we wanted a little place in Brooklyn and that’s where we should be.”

Tony blinks and looks like he wants to argue for a second before Bucky’s arm makes a series of clicking noises like plates falling together. “All right,” he says, sitting back. “All right. I was going to give you a full tour of the building, but. Well – it was worth a try.”

He stands up and turns to speak to Banner, who’s already on his way out, and Sam stands as well.

“Don’t be mad,” he says. “I’d do a lot to make sure you’re all right, including piss you off. I’m not a hundred percent joking around here, okay? I see veterans do this a lot – live in old burned out buildings, in their cars, that kinda thing. I’m not saying you’re doing that, but it’s hard to make sure the inside of your head is okay when what’s outside of it looks like something out of _Hostel_.”

“No _Hostel_ ,” Steve says. “I swear on your dad’s donuts.”

“Man, those were Krispy Kreme,” Sam says, shaking his head.

Tony wanders over, interrupting them. “Hey, do you have a contractor?” He pulls out his phone again and taps it once. “Pep, do we have a contractor?”

“ _I_ have a contractor. _You_ have only the vaguest idea what a contractor does,” Pepper replies. “Why, who needs it? Is it Steve and Sergeant Barnes? They need a lot more than a contractor.”

“Uh,” Steve says.

“We don’t have a contractor yet,” Bucky says, leaning forward so Pepper can hear him. “We also need an electrician.”

“Look what you started,” Natasha says in Steve’s ear, patting his shoulder. “Today it’s contractors, tomorrow it’s drywall.”

“Uh,” he says again, and thinks about jumping through the window.

Later, walking back to the facility, Steve gets a text from Tony saying _At least consider Stark Tower a safehouse if something goes wrong_ and then _And stop losing the gadgets I give you, they’re kind of important prototypes_. To Bucky, Steve says, “It’s not a terrible idea. Living in Stark Tower.”

Bucky shakes his head. “It would be terrible, though. You seem like you’re going out of your skin at the facility, and it would be a thousand times worse living there. Having everything done for you all the time, always someone watching. Always people around. You’d go crazy fast. And I – I want it to just be you and me.”

Steve glances at Bucky, but Bucky, out in a crowd, is brusque and distracted, watchful. After three blocks he gives Steve a nudge and says, “American booty,” and Steve swears he’ll call the biographer and tell him about the summer Bucky wanted to be a mermaid.

*

Two weeks and five failed training sessions later, they find themselves almost, but not quite, the owners of a house. Between Sam and Natasha and a former SHIELD lawyer named Angus, neither Steve nor Bucky have even had to step outside the facility for the transaction. In Steve’s daydreams he and Bucky will be able to just show up after the house is paid for, but Sam talks him into spending a few nights there before the final sale goes through. The current owner, the husband of a distant Harriman cousin, is so eager to get rid of the property at their price that the only haggling happens when Bucky demands a full inspection and cleaning on the owner’s dime.

The training session after they find out they can stay in the house the next day is the worst yet, and this time Natasha kicks Bucky out. She doesn’t spar with Steve, though, and only says tiredly, “Just hold the punching bag for me.”

She doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t insult her by asking her to hold the bag for him when it's his turn. They’re silent all the way through jumping rope, running – and god, she’s fast; he always forgets that – and then she says, “Let’s race,” with a little nod at the rock wall. She’s vicious on the rock wall and will kick him right off if he’s not paying attention, so of course that’s when she chooses to talk about Bucky.

“He was one of the people who trained me,” she says, swinging four feet to the left. “Sergeant Barnes. I just barely remembered him from when I was little, but – it was him.”

“I could tell,” he says, and he knows she’s going to launch herself back in his direction to try and knock him down, but he doesn’t stop her. She bounces off his side with a grunt of discomfort.

“He wasn’t the only one,” she continues, “but I think he might have been the one who trained them. All of them. He remembers being there in that room and teaching them – us – but I don’t know if he realizes there are generations of assassins who modeled themselves after him.”

She swings in his direction again just as he leaps upward and out of the way. “I think he probably knows it,” Steve says. “He’s pretty smart. He’s connected the dots.”

“Maybe,” she says. She makes a grab for his legs just before he reaches the top and he lets her drag him down a little bit before he puts his foot right underneath her clavicle and kicks her off, relishing in the quick zip of her falling before she catches herself only a few feet from the ground. Grinning, he pulls himself up to the top and taps it before sliding down to the bottom, where she stands looking unimpressed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, were you trying to get to the top?” he asks. “My mistake.”

“I want the public to know what a sore winner Captain America is,” she says. Then, “You’re so happy. I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to ruin it for you, but if you knew what it was like – ”

She tightens her lips and shakes her head, and he has a feeling that’s as much as he’ll get out of her. “He knows,” Steve begins, and doesn’t quite know how to say what he needs to say. “He knows he couldn’t shake me if he tried.”

“He does,” she says, touching his arm with a wry smile. “And that’s sometimes harder than if you hated him.”

“I know.” Dr. Reznick keeps telling him not to cut Bucky off with reassurances when he talks about what he’s done. It’s more difficult, almost, than all the times he and Sam almost caught up to Bucky and he’d step into a room and know Bucky was there only minutes before, that their fingerprints were overlapping on the door and that if he had only been that much quicker, he’d have caught him. It seems to be a running theme in his life.

*

"Okay, the house is listed under James and Steven Wilson," Sam says the next morning when they meet in front of the house. "So you don't get anybody poking around in your business for a while yet."  
  
"Thank you," Steve says, reaching for the keys, but Sam holds them back.  
  
"These are grown-up things. You’re about to buy a house, even if it's actually a rat hotel," Sam says, pointing at Bucky. "You're grown-ups now."  
  
"We're sixty years older than you are," Bucky says, snatching the keys before Sam can pull them away again.  
  
"You're like five years younger than me and you know it." Sam shakes his head. "I feel like I'm releasing a couple of deadly kindergartners into the wild."  
  
It's not that the house is dirty anymore, exactly. The cleaning crew the owner hired had been followed quickly by an exterminator and the first of what appears to be many visits from a plumber. Looking around at the rings of staining on the walls, dark and bled through where the wallpaper was torn off, the graying, uneven, splintery wood floor, he's glad Bucky dug his heels in about the inspection and the cleaning.

In the living room, there are stacks of boxes. On the side of each one, in Sam’s neat writing, is “Steve’s junk.” Sam pats Steve affectionately on the back when he hugs him, and says, “All right, man, all right, come on, I just wanted to get it out of storage. And I’m not helping you unpack, so don’t even think about it. I have a date.”

But he ends up helping anyway, goes out and gets pizza from the place down the street because he says they have to test the neighborhood pizza first, and they eat it standing up around the dingy marble island in the middle of the kitchen. In the master bedroom, Steve discovers more boxes and his bed, a cherry spool bed he bought because it reminded him of his mother’s bed, and gets a little choked up, resting his hand on the dusty spindling at the foot. He’ll need to polish it, he thinks, rubbing his thumb over the smooth wood, and sees himself there on the bed with Bucky. The last time he slept in this bed he was alone and, more often than not, he’d lain awake staring at the ceiling for hours before going to read on the couch. The sheets are in one of the boxes beside the bed and Bucky and Sam are entertaining each other putting up bookshelves and mocking Steve’s taste in entertainment, so he pulls the sheets out and makes the bed in slow, careful movements, hospital corners and neat, pinched edges so the coverlet lays nicely.

“Hey,” Bucky says from the door. “Sam just left and took the pizza with him. He said there are people who will deliver food to us. Is that true or was he messing around with me?”

“No, it’s true. Definitely on my top ten list of favorite things about this century.” Steve shakes out the pillow and sets it down, turning to see Bucky looking back and forth between him and the pristine bed. Steve’s no interior designer, but he’s always been careful about what he surrounds himself with, arranging things in ways that are mysteriously beautiful to him and saving money for the best he can afford. The cherry spool bed has been one of his only true indulgences – he gawked at the price, went home and researched it and went back the next day ready to bargain the dealer down, but never got the chance because the man had recognized Captain America and gave him an outrageous discount. The sheets are dark blue trimmed in white and the softest fabric he’s ever touched. He’s not sure why he picked them out considering how difficult it’s been to sleep on anything that’s not the ground, but some part of him wants to surround Bucky with only quiet, calm, soft things.

“So we’re alone,” Bucky says, moving into the room and suddenly in Steve’s space, right where Steve wants him to be.

“Nobody’s watching,” Steve says. “We can do whatever we want.”

“Yeah? What do you want to do?” Bucky murmurs.

“Can I kiss you again?” he asks thickly.

“If you don’t I’m gonna call Sam back here and play cards with him all night.” Bucky tilts his head up so Steve can’t focus on anything but the curve of his mouth. Before Steve even realizes what he’s doing, he reaches up and runs his thumb over Bucky’s bottom lip, the source of a thousand daydreams. Bucky goes quiet, shivering, both hands clutching at Steve’s hips.

“God, Bucky, your mouth,” he whispers.

“You thought about it?” Bucky’s breath is unsteady against Steve’s skin, and his eyes are already heavy.

“I tried not to but – every day,” Steve says. It’s something he’s held so close and it’s strange to just admit it outright like this – he feels like he should be confessing it to a priest. The sin of worshipping Bucky Barnes’s mouth. Anyone who saw it would forgive him. He moves his thumb away but doesn’t want to stop touching, so he runs his knuckles over the side of Bucky’s neck instead. The skin there is hot, and he realizes Bucky’s blushing – embarrassed or shy, Steve can't tell, and he's surprised; whenever he thought about this he always thought Bucky would be shameless, cocky, pushing him around with a smirk and a wink, all enthusiasm and mischief. He was so good at getting girls to like him, teasing them, doing more with the tilt of his chin than Steve could do now with his entire body and all the fame at his disposal. But, Steve remembers – from this long vantage point, where he looks back and realizes Bucky was just a kid – Bucky never stayed out all night, and when he came home after a date with lipstick smeared on his lips and his neck, Steve would ask _was she nice? Do you like her?_ and Bucky would shrug and say _she was really nice, too nice for a guy like me._ He'd clap Steve on the back and say _you oughta make me stay home. I got everything I need right here._  
  
Steve strokes Bucky's neck and watches the shudder go all the way through his body, watches the way he closes his eyes and bites his lip hard enough that it turns white.  
  
"My skin is –" Bucky says. His breath is fast and unsteady. "I don't know what it is. Ever since I started healing, being touched is too much."  
  
"Oh," Steve breathes. Suddenly everything's a little too tight, thick. He has to move slowly. "Too much – does it hurt?"  
  
"It did at first," Bucky admits. He still won't open his eyes. "I holed up in a motel the first few weeks. I could hardly move. I didn't know why I could feel everything."  
  
"But you're – it doesn’t still feel like that, does it?"  
  
"A little. Still some crossed wires," Bucky says, with a tiny, wry smile. "But not with you. I’ve been going crazy every time you touch me.”  
  
Steve swallows, moving in a little closer and carefully, carefully putting both hands on Bucky's hips. Bucky twitches and makes a low noise in the back of his throat. “God, I want – I really want to touch you.”  
  
"Good," Bucky says. "It’s gonna be fast, though. You might be disappointed."  
  
"Couldn't happen," Steve says immediately and, with that same slow care, like the air is too thick to move normally, he draws Bucky close and presses a soft kiss just at the corner of his mouth. Bucky winds his fingers in Steve's shirt, pulling him in. Steve kisses him again and Bucky parts his lips for more, but Steve's been a little obsessed with his mouth for over eighty years and he wants to take some time appreciating it the way he didn’t get a chance to do the first time. There's something so strange and unbearably good about that, about forcing himself not to move, to just stay there and rub his thumbs over Bucky's hips, dipping just under the waist of his pants. It’s driving Bucky crazy, Steve thinks. He makes a soft whining protest when Steve's kisses stay slow and close-mouthed, and he slides against Steve and then away again like he's trying not to do it and can't help himself.  
  
Steve lasts until Bucky goes after what he wants. "Shoulda known you'd make me beg for it," Bucky says shakily, biting Steve's lower lip gently, and Steve groans and lets go, finally allowing himself Bucky's warm, sweet mouth. He's always loved the way Bucky smells and now it's mixed up in the way he tastes, and Steve can't quite make himself realize that the man gradually wrapping around Steve until he's got no choice but to press him against the wall is really Bucky – that the same guy he's known all his life is the one shivering under his lips and hands. He should head for the bed, but then the wall is right there and Bucky clings to him and slides just right. The urge to rub against him is so strong he can't help himself and once he starts, Bucky goes so pliant under him, like Steve is the only thing holding him up.  
  
It's the first time Steve's ever had anything like this, the first time he's felt the effect of his body on another body. He can't believe he's made Bucky hard, made him stiff and wet with, if he feels anything like Steve does, a kind of delicious ache. He skims his hands up under Bucky's shirt, stroking his warm, soft skin, and Bucky arches, losing concentration in the middle of a kiss so he's just panting short, sharp breaths into Steve's mouth. He really is that sensitive, Steve thinks, overcome by a hot rush that makes him rub against Bucky even harder. He traces little circles against Bucky's lower back, loving the feeling of Bucky’s skin under his fingertips, and Bucky stiffens, tightening around Steve's thigh and pulling on his shirt until it almost rips.  
  
"Steve," he pleads, sounding anguished, "I'm really close –"  
  
"Do you want to stop?" Steve asks, stilling.  
  
"No – _no_." Bucky pulls on his shirt in frustration and it does rip then, but it doesn't matter because Steve slides his hands down and grips his ass hard and that's it, Bucky’s hips start jerking fast and he presses tight against Steve, muffling his quiet, harsh cries into Steve's shoulder. He soaks through both their pants as he comes, falling apart so hard and so thoroughly that Steve wonders how long it’s been since he let go like this. He kisses Bucky’s neck while he rides it out, but after a few minutes he realizes Bucky is still trembling under him, overstimulated and not soothed. He holds him instead, stroking his hair until his breath stops shuddering in and out and it seems like he can stand on his own.  
  
"You okay?" Steve murmurs.  
  
"Good," Bucky says hoarsely, unwinding his limbs from around Steve's body.  
  
"Because you look like you got hit by a tornado." Steve grins when Bucky glares at him. His face and lips are red, and his eyes are sleepy and hot and satisfied, so the glare isn't very effective.  
  
"I was about to do something really nice for you, but if you're gonna be a jerk about it, maybe you can take care of this by yourself," Bucky says, running his knuckles over Steve's erection through his sweatpants.  
  
"You can do anything you want to me," Steve says. He's so hard he feels lightheaded. "Anything."  
  
"I know I can." Bucky smiles up at him and Steve loves him so much, suddenly, that he kisses him a little harder than he means to. But Bucky goes with it, nudging him backward until Steve hits the bed. "I have plans, but you gotta get naked."  
  
Steve strips off his ripped shirt, shoves down his sweatpants and underwear, and stands practically at attention. Bucky laughs, but his hands go to Steve's chest right away.  
  
"Christ, wouldja look at that," he says, spreading his fingers out and looking Steve up and down. "I remember the first time I saw you naked after you got big. I almost passed out. I miss you being little, though. I never got to kiss you then."  
  
The metal of Bucky's hand is cold against his hot skin, and he tries to stay still as Bucky runs his hands over as much of him as he can reach. He stays at the nipples and Steve gasps, cock pulsing so hard it's visibly twitching. Bucky still hasn't touched him there and Steve wonders if he will, after all, make Steve take care of it. He imagines stroking himself while Bucky watches, and tilts his head back, groaning.  
  
"Can I –?" Bucky asks.  
  
"Anything," Steve says again, and Bucky kisses the hollow of his throat before he bends down and draws Steve's nipple between his lips, into his hot mouth, biting a little. Steve's hands fly up to the back of Bucky's head without meaning to, but he only slides his fingers into Bucky's hair. He’ll come if Bucky keeps this up, he thinks, and his breath stutters at the realization that he could, that Bucky could make him lose it that fast. Bucky bites again, and suddenly his hand is on Steve's cock, making pleasure curl along the insides of his thighs.  
  
"You're so wet," he says breathlessly, straightening and resting his head on Steve's shoulder. He sounds awestruck, not smug at all, and his fingers are slow and tentative.  
  
"That happens when I'm really, um, " Steve says, and blushes hot, his voice dropping low. He feels like he's telling Bucky a secret. "When I'm really excited."  
  
"Get on the bed, then," Bucky says, giving him a nudge. As he complies, he tries to keep an eye on Bucky, almost afraid to turn his back for fear he'll find himself in an empty room. Bucky looks thoughtful for a moment and then brings his wet hand to his mouth and licks it.  
  
"God, Bucky," Steve says, voice wavering. Bucky winks at him before he peels off his shirt and jeans and climbs onto the bed beside him.  
  
"I want to suck on you. Is that all right?" Bucky asks, running a finger up the slick length of his cock and waiting for Steve's nod. "Did anybody ever do that to you before?"  
  
"Nobody ever did anything to me," Steve says.  
  
"No? After all this time?" He's not surprised, like other people always are, only curious, probably because he knows Steve was never going to do it with just anyone.  
  
"I only ever wanted to be with somebody I loved," he says, and Bucky looks overwhelmed for a second, soft like Steve’s only seen him a few times. He’s always felt secure in Bucky’s affection, enough that it never needed to be said. He’s got Bucky for life and he knows it and he’s always known it. But if he’d known – if he’d been paying attention – well, he feels a little dumb because that look is more than just affection, it tells him Bucky _loves_ him, and he was too stupid to see it before.  
  
"You were always so – " Bucky says, leaning his forehead against Steve's with a little sigh. "I could never believe no one could see you like I could see you. You were this secret treasure, all for me."  
  
He pulls away before Steve can kiss him and slides down the bed, settling between Steve's spread legs.  
  
"What about you?" Steve asks, more to distract himself from the sight of Bucky's mouth so near his cock than because he really expects a straight answer. "Did you ever do this?"  
  
Bucky plays with him for a few seconds before he looks up again. "Thought about it all the time," he says with a little shiver. "I wanted to do this to you so bad. I never did it to anybody else though, never did much at all. Couple a guys, just hands. Not much more with girls. I only ever went all the way with one girl. I wanted to, y'know, prove to myself I could do it."  
  
Steve pushes himself up on his elbows. "Really?" he asks, although it's exactly what he wondered earlier. "You went out almost every night."  
  
"I liked dancing," Bucky says. "And I really liked petting. Used to do that for hours. But – I was always hung up on this dumb guy I knew. Couldn't get past it."  
  
"So you were all talk." He smiles at Bucky's sulky little frown, like he's about to defend his own bad reputation. "You'd always try to get me to make you stay home. I thought you were pretending to hate it to make me feel better."  
  
"Nah, I didn't always like it, but I had to get away from you or I was gonna go crazy. I just wanted you to make me stay. I used to hope you'd finally just take me in hand, tell me what to do, that kinda thing." His face lights up, the edges of his lips curling at what is obviously a good memory, private and satisfying. "Be the boss, you know? You always were anyway."  
  
He can do that, he thinks, he'll do anything if Bucky wants it. "Is that what you like?"  
  
Bucky stills, rubbing his lips against Steve's leg, a maddening ticklish brush that makes his thigh muscles tremble. "I guess I probably couldn't handle being ordered around much anymore," he says finally. "Not the way I used to want it."  
  
But before Steve can ask any more questions – and he has plenty – Bucky turns his attention downward, opening his mouth around Steve's cock and sucking slowly on the tip of it. If he's trying to shut Steve up, it works. All he can focus on is the slow, hot suction. He falls back against the bed and tries not to kick – mostly successful; Bucky doesn't seem to notice – and to find somewhere to put his hands. They end up in Bucky's hair again and Bucky's eyes flutter shut, face flushing pink as he slides his mouth down farther, faster, drawing him into his mouth in longer strokes.  
  
Steve can't look at Bucky's red, kiss-swollen lips around his cock, but god, he has to see it and keeps looking down and then away, over and over, winding himself up by watching. He doesn't know if Bucky's doing it right, doesn't care, because anything Bucky did would be the right thing. Bucky shifts around a little for a better angle and then it's really good and Steve doesn't mean to tug on his hair, but when he does Bucky moans around him and sucks harder. He's got the metal hand tucked under Steve's ass, and the other hand around the base of his cock, and when he squeezes in tandem with his mouth – unevenly, no doubt inexpertly, but perfect – Steve pulls his hair again and Bucky really moans, looking up at Steve hotly through half-lidded eyes. His hips are moving, and Steve realizes he's grinding against the bed, sucking hard and sloppy and so into what he’s doing that all Steve can hear is his shuddering, ragged breath.  
  
 _He loves this_ , Steve thinks, and _he's gonna come again while he's sucking me_ , and that tips him right over the edge. The pleasure is so bright and heavy he feels like it rolls through his entire body and he’s not used to that – it’s not like he doesn’t get turned on, but he hasn’t had the time or the inclination to make it anything but a perfunctory daily exercise (or three or four or five times daily, after the serum) since he can barely remember when. There were times, even during the war, when he let himself fantasize: his hands under Peggy’s skirt, sliding up her thighs, or digging into muscles on a man’s back – not Bucky’s, he’d tell himself desperately, just a man’s back, a man pressed hard against him and moaning in his ear. And of course it always felt good, but it was nothing like this. It’s a shock to feel himself losing control when he hadn’t realized he was controlling himself to begin with, but his momentary panic is drowned out by that staggering pleasure and the knowledge that it really is Bucky – it was always Bucky, every time – taking him apart and he’s allowed to love it. It's completely graceless and he kicks Bucky again and pulls his hair hard enough to actually hurt, if the noise he makes is any indication, but Bucky only presses him back down onto the bed and holds him there.  
  
It takes him a while to recover. Bucky soothes him through it, pressing soft kisses all over his stomach before he pulls away and kneels, wiping his mouth. The comforter is wet where he was rubbing against it, and Steve has to touch him. He pushes himself up and cups Bucky's face, running a thumb over his bottom lip again. Bucky opens up around it, sucking for a second with his eyes closed. When he opens them again they're dazed. He looks almost as sex-stupid as Steve feels.  
  
"Come here," Steve says, pulling him close and stretching out on the bed. Bucky curls up on him, and lets Steve stroke him like he's a cat. Steve's almost glad Bucky can't see his face right now – maybe nobody should be this happy, maybe nobody's happiness should be tied up so much in another person, but he's learned to accept that this is just the way it is. He can survive without Bucky, and he's certain he could even be happy at some point given the right circumstances, but never like this, not even close.  
  
"You sleeping?" Bucky mumbles against his neck, and he realizes he's stopped moving his hands.  
  
"Nah," he says. "Need a shower though. You're a mess."  
  
"Hm, nice pillow talk." But he rolls off the bed and stalks naked into the bathroom, and Steve scrambles after him, hoping the water actually works.  
  
*  
  
"I can sleep wherever," Steve says when they've finished unpacking and are nearly tipping over in exhaustion. "We don't even have to be in the same bed – I mean, I guess I'm not sure if you want to do that."  
  
It seems stupid, suddenly, that he's been assuming Bucky would want to sleep beside him. Neither of them are good sleepers at best, and this isn't the containment room. Bucky throws a disbelieving look over his shoulder as he pulls back the covers and slides under them. "After the things I let you do to me in that shower, you better be able to sleep next to me."  
  
"But you might – "  
  
"Steve."  
  
"Okay," he says, giving in. He's so weak for that look particular look of Bucky's, the one that says he’s not about to put up with any of Steve’s bullshit. He pulls off his sweatpants, turns off the lamp, and crawls in beside Bucky.  
  
The noise outside is incredible compared to the total silence of the facility. Metal scraping, music with the bass up, shouting, the occasional honk. It's different, of course, than it was when he and Bucky were younger, but at the heart of it, it's Brooklyn, and he's missed that old Brooklyn noise without knowing he missed it.  
  
"All we need now are Mr. and Mrs. Corcoran banging their bed against the wall," Bucky says softly. "Remember the noise she made?"  
  
They'd met Mrs. Corcoran in the hall sometimes, and she didn't look like a woman who made choo-choo train noises during sex, but then who did? Steve could imitate her perfectly, and would do it when Bucky asked – but only if the Corcorans weren't home because the walls were paper-thin. "Hoo, hoooooo. Oh Jimmy! Hoo, hooooo. Oh Jimmy!"  
  
"That's disrespectful, Captain America," Bucky laughs.  
  
"They kept us awake all night. That's disrespectful," he says indignantly.  
  
After a few minutes, Bucky rolls away from Steve onto his side, and Steve follows to spread kisses over his shoulders. He's still a little tentative – not because he thinks Bucky would push him away, but because finally being able to touch him after all this time has released some kind of flood and he thinks if he does it too much he won't be able to stop. He has to ration it if he can because no amount would be enough for him. It's just sensible, he thinks, and ignores the part of him that says _be ready to let this go when it's taken away again_.  
  
"Can you put your arm around me while we're sleeping?" Bucky asks. "Like you used to, but tighter."  
  
The question is quiet, a little defiant, like he half expects Steve to say no or to tease him. "Yeah, Buck, of course," he mumbles against Bucky's skin, and curls around him snugly. Bucky gives a sigh of something that sounds like relief and relaxes against him, and it's good on so many levels – familiar, because he spent so many nights holding onto Bucky in the dark, unfamiliar because they're warm and naked against each other, and something that slips between the two, familiar and unfamiliar, because it's all new and yet it seems like they were always like this.  
  
"You don't have to stop kissing me," Bucky says.  
  
"Thought you were sleepy."  
  
"If you're kissing, I'm not sleeping." He scratches Steve's arm impatiently. "So don't stop."  
  
"Remember when you said I was bossy?" Steve kisses just behind his ear and Bucky squirms. "Sorry, I forgot about your ears."  
  
"What about them?" Bucky asks as Steve moves down to his neck.  
  
"I thought you didn't like anyone touching them."  
  
"You must be thinking of someone else, pal," Bucky says, sounding amused.  
  
He's not thinking of anyone else, he's sure of it, but he's not entirely sure why. Sifting through his memories – Bucky-related and Bucky-adjacent – he suddenly remembers the two of them, thirteen or so, sprawled out on the floor in Bucky's room. What were they reading? Dick Tracy, probably; Bucky loved Dick Tracy, and Steve liked to read whatever Bucky liked to read. As usual, Steve had Bucky's pillow and Bucky lay with his head on Steve's stomach. They'd had cookies and soda pop, and Bucky teased him about his rumbling belly and whined until Steve petted his hair, also as usual. No pomade then – he didn't start caring about the way his hair looked until later – so Steve was free to sift through all that thick, dark hair unimpeded. Once in a while he'd tweak Bucky's nose or write something on his forehead to make him laugh, and this particular afternoon when Bucky sighed and turned his head to the left a little, Steve shifted with him and ran his thumb over the rim of Bucky's ear. He remembers – with a new perspective – how Bucky stiffened and then shuddered, gasping, and sat up fast, upsetting the chair he’d propped his feet up on. _Don't – don't do that_ , he said in a trembling voice, and when Steve put a hand on his back and asked what was wrong, he said _I think you should go home_ , sounding like he was about to cry. He apologized the next day, and Steve made sure not to stray outside the boundaries again.  
  
"I think I was misinformed," he says, and kisses Bucky's ears and neck until he's pliant and whimpering, incoherent, while Steve explores his body with curious fingers. It's so easy – Steve wonders why he ever thought it would be difficult to make someone else feel good. Maybe it's just because it's Bucky, but he doesn't think it could have been this simple when they were younger, and not just because of the war. They were different, he was different. He can't imagine their younger selves being this open or comfortable. He fits his hand around the heavy, thick length of Bucky's cock and touches him like he touches himself, long, firm, slow strokes, until Bucky's writhing and turning his head to gasp open-mouthed into the pillow. Steve rubs against him, and when the two of them move together his cock slides right along the cleft of Bucky's ass and he makes a beautiful longing moan.  
  
"Do you want me inside you?" Steve asks, genuinely a little surprised but electrified by the thought.  
  
"Yes," Bucky says tightly, his breath shaking, and Steve reaches down with his free hand to grasp his own cock and direct it so he's almost pressing inside, rubbing back and forth. He can't – he knows they need something to make it slippery, he's not completely ignorant – but he imagines himself opening Bucky up like that, with his cock, imagines Bucky doing that to him, and suddenly he's coming in a rush of hot pleasure, panting out Bucky's name and moaning with every sharp exhale. He hears Bucky gasp "did you – god, _Steve_ –" and then his hitching breath turns into frantic moaning before he jerks in Steve's hand and spills all over it in hard pulses.  
  
After a few minutes Steve tries to get up for a warm washcloth, but Bucky won't let him go. He cleans them with the sheet instead, and pulls Bucky to his chest, tight the way he wants it, and Bucky holds onto his arm fiercely. Steve wants to tell him it's all right, that this is only the first night of many, but the house feels almost like a sanctuary out of time, like a space hovering somewhere between 1944 and now that only he and Bucky are allowed to occupy, and anything might break the spell. _This is ours forever_ , he wants to say, but he just rubs his nose against the nape of Bucky's neck and holds on until they fall asleep.  
  
*

In the night Bucky rolls out of bed. Steve wakes up the second he moves and watches Bucky slip out of the room.

“Buck?” he mumbles, but he thinks he knows where Bucky’s going.

“Just taking a look around,” Bucky says softly. “I’ll be right back.”

Perimeter check. He didn’t do it when they were in the facility, Steve thinks, because he was secure there, being watched. Here anything could happen.

“Sorry,” Bucky says when he crawls back into bed with a rough, sweet kiss.

“It’s all right. I’ll be up in a couple of hours to do the same thing,” Steve says. Bucky doesn’t turn over again, but stays facing Steve. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” Bucky shifts a little. “Just want to look at you, I guess. I still wake up and think maybe it’s a dream.”

Steve lets him look. Anybody else and he’d feel uncomfortable, but he’s looking his fill too. Bucky’s hair is almost as long as it was during the war, and it tends to stick up if he doesn’t slick it down. He runs his fingers through it and Bucky sighs in pleasure and leans into his hand.

“It’s so…fluffy,” Steve says, rubbing his fingertips over Bucky’s scalp to make him moan.

“You say fluffy, but I think you mean sexy,” Bucky says.

“Nah, soft and fluffy like a bunny.”

“I’m gonna kick you out of this bed,” Bucky warns him.

“You want me to stop petting you?” Steve asks, pausing.

“Hmm, keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll wiggle my nose,” Bucky replies drowsily, and moves like he wants to get closer but has to stop himself. His arm, Steve thinks – he’d have to drape it over Steve’s body, and he still doesn’t want to touch Steve with it, not really. Steve stops petting, ignoring Bucky’s indignant little hmph, and puts a hand on Bucky’s metal elbow, drawing him in. Bucky holds him off for a second, but Steve keeps on pulling until Bucky gives in and lets Steve rearrange him carefully until they’re as close as they can get.

“I missed you,” he whispers against Bucky’s skin, and Bucky’s fingers dig into his back a little before relaxing. From the moment Bucky fell from that train until Steve saw him again on the bridge, recognized that face he's loved for so long, he felt like he’d been ripped apart and sewn back together wrong but somehow couldn’t die, walking around with his guts hanging out while everyone pretended nothing was wrong with him. He can’t say that to Bucky, though – he can’t put all that onto Bucky, on top of everything else – so he only whispers it again and again: _I missed you, I missed you_.

“I’m not dreaming,” Bucky says, voice shaking. “You’re going to be right here when I wake up.”

Steve holds onto him tight, as tight as Bucky likes it. “Right here. Tomorrow we’ll go running and I’ll make breakfast if you can choke it down, and later we’ll finish unpacking. The electrician’s coming at two.”

He keeps talking and it’s mundane, the day he has planned. It’s domestic. It’s calm and quiet and slow, and everything he never thought he’d be allowed to have. He can’t help but remember, suddenly, the first few weeks after he woke up. An agent – Agent Dunhill, one of the many who were there when he bolted out into the streets  – slowly, quietly explained the major world crises that had happened while he was under, then escorted him to a furnished apartment SHIELD had requisitioned for him and left him there with a phone, two pairs of pants and underwear, three shirts, one pair of socks and one pair of shoes. He remembers how heavy he felt, how utterly lost and unprepared to live. Sometimes there’s a certain quality of light in the evenings in Manhattan, especially in the winter, that makes him think of those early days and that apartment with the broken blinds and he wonders how he didn’t go crazy before Fury approached him with the Avengers initiative.

He falls asleep in the middle of listing the vegetables they’ll need to get the next day at the grocery store, Bucky snoring softly by his side.

*  
  
They've arranged everything in the apartment by the following evening, although they're missing a lot of items that might make it look slightly less condemned. All his living room furniture was covered in a spray of blood, and sometime between the night Fury was shot and the day Sam called to have all his stuff moved into storage, his apartment was robbed and stripped of anything that could be carried out. He mentions ordering online to Bucky, who says he'd rather walk around the neighborhood and see what he likes. Steve can imagine him dubiously testing furniture and asking about discounts and tries not to smile, but Bucky catches him out and enthusiastically persuades him to explain what's so funny, right there on the kitchen floor. Three times.  
  
Later, after they've showered and ordered take-out, he discovers he's missing over half his dishes and only has one fork left. Bucky, already deep into his pad thai, doesn't seem to care.  
  
"Can I ask you a question?" Steve asks, and Bucky nods, mouth full. "Why'd you want me to boss you around, back then?"  
  
He hasn't been able to stop thinking about it since the night before – not because there's anything wrong with it, but because he wants to know what it was about it that Bucky needed. And if he can still give it to him, somehow, in a different way.  
  
"Dunno," Bucky says. He shrugs, an automatic response to something he doesn't want to answer, but then stares down at his food with a frown like he's really thinking about it. "It turned me on. I wanted you to pay attention to me like that. Maybe I just wanted to know you'd always want me around, even if it was just to – I don’t know, correct me if I was bad."  
  
"You were never bad, though," Steve says, puzzled.  
  
"You're a lot to live up to." Bucky doesn't sound angry, but it stings a little nonetheless, like there's an accusation there. He gives Steve an apologetic look. "I don't mean it like that. There's something about you that makes people want to be better. I was always so messy. I wanted you to see how messy I am and still – want me."  
  
"I see you, Buck," he says. "Everybody's messy. I'm messy."  
  
"Not like me." Bucky shakes his head. "I was tainted even before HYDRA got to me. They didn't have to work very hard. I killed a lot of people in the war. Hundreds, maybe. Most of them were just kids, all those poor desperate bastards. Resistance, even – we killed a bunch of Resistance without knowing till later. But all that, the way I used to be able to just roll it up and put it away and never worry about it, that helped when they started in on me. I was already good at it. I was already halfway there."  
  
Steve wants to crawl across the table and shake him, make him look at himself the way Steve sees him because he's so, so blind. "That's not you being tainted. Jesus, Bucky, that's survival. You were just a kid too."  
  
Bucky shrugs again, like it doesn't matter. "Maybe. But you gotta know there's something in me that's all right with killing people. Anyone who's not you."  
  
Steve remembers Salzburg again, holding him for hours while he cried. "I don't think you're as all right with it as you think you are."  
  
"Yeah, well. Anyway." Bucky steals half of Steve's eggplant in a single move. "Just because I don't want you to tie me up and spank me anymore, that doesn't mean I don't still wanna be your best guy."  
  
"You always are," Steve says automatically. "Or you would be if you'd stop taking my food."  
  
"Be quicker then, old man," Bucky says.  
  
They eat in silence for a while.  
  
"So," Steve says. "Spanking."  
  
Bucky goes bright red, bashful, but he gives Steve his same old slow smile with trouble behind it. "That could still be on the table."  
  
The doorbell rings before Steve can ask him to elaborate, and when Steve opens the door, Natasha is there. She does the smallest of double-takes, looking at him once and then again, closer, a full up and down scan with one eyebrow raised.  
  
"Wow," she drawls. "Tony was right."  
  
"Hi. Um. Good to see you." He actually almost puts his hands down to cover himself before he puts them up on the door frame instead. "What are you doing in – in our neighborhood?"  
  
"You asked me." She hands him a file. "Housewarming gift from a friend in the CIA."  
  
"Oh. Thanks." He's so glad it's almost dark so she can't see how badly he's blushing. "Is this everyone?"  
  
"Everyone who was either just hired or just quit." She grins up at him and he really, really wishes he had on more clothes. He's in pajama pants and a t-shirt and she's seen him in less, but for some reason he feels like she knows the exact events that led to the refrigerator door hanging loose on its hinges. He shifts a little so she can't see it and vows to buy a toolbox tomorrow.  
  
"Thanks. So, uh. What did Tony say?"  
  
"To avoid this entire block for about two weeks until the pheromones clear," she says.  
  
"Do you want to stay for dinner?" Steve asks desperately. "We've got Thai food."  
  
"Uh, no. I think two weeks was a conservative estimate. I'll be back in a year." She sticks her head under Steve's arm and calls out cheerfully, "Bye, Sergeant Barnes."  
  
Bucky raises his satay at her.  
  
"Bye," Steve says with a stiff little wave, and waits until she's out of his sight before he closes the door and goes back to the table. He scrubs his hands over his face and stares at a knot in the wooden table for a second before shaking his head.  
  
"Wow," Bucky says.  
  
"I know. I know." He's still hot all over. "I can't figure out how she does that."  
  
Bucky nods toward Steve's chest. "You have come on your shirt."  
  
"What?" he exclaims, tugging down the hem.  
  
"I'm kidding, you just look like someone who got his brains fucked out. Nothing can cover that up." Bucky takes the opportunity to steal all the edamame. "God, sex makes me hungry."  
  
"She wouldn't have been able to tell with you," Steve says.  
  
"Wouldn't she?" Bucky says, and Steve really looks at him. He's wearing a pair of Steve's shorts and a Brooklyn Dodgers sweatshirt from god knows where or when, and he's got some fantastic beard burn on the side of his neck, but it's his face that says everything: the drowsy eyes and swollen lips, but most of all the bone-deep contentment. He’s better here – everything is real here, with no one watching. It’s one of those perfect, painfully hyperclear moments when he can see everything from the outside as well as the inside. It hurts to know a moment is perfect as it’s happening, he thinks, but nevertheless it goes into that deep well of memories where he can fetch it later when he needs it.  
  
“I hope you’re done eating for now,” Steve says in a low voice.

“Yep,” Bucky says, shoving away his plate, and if the table isn’t particularly sturdy, Steve isn’t worried – they can get another.


	6. Integration

**SR-9899 APPROVAL FOR ACTIVE DUTY**

To Whom It May Concern,

After extensive psychological and medical evaluation, James Buchanan Barnes    has been found fit for active duty under the recommendation of all affiliated medical and administrative personnel. It has been 169  days since the agent has discharged a weapon.

Attached is **SR-9899-A3, APPLICATION FOR AGENT STATUS**. If either form is not filed within 60 days of the agent’s completion of training on  12 NOV 2016  , the agent will be considered ineligible for reapplication for 90 days.

X

Elizabeth Halstead Reznick, MD, Lt Col US ARMY, 010-975

Dara Solnit Shannen, MD, 013-573

Nicholas Joseph Fury, 001-563

Natalia Alianovna Romanova, 052-464

Samuel Thomas Wilson, 117-969

Steven Grant Rogers, Capt US ARMY, 001-041

James Buchanan Barnes, SSgt US ARMY, 001-341

 

*

“We’re going to start out nice and slow,” Natasha says. “Barnes, just come up behind him, and Steve, flip him over your shoulder.”

“Just throw me through the wall nice and slow, Steve,” Bucky mutters as he walks past Steve on the mats, swinging his arm to stretch it out.

“Stop being such a baby, Barnes.”

“Yeah, Buck, stop being such a baby.” Steve gives him a smug smile that he hopes is exactly as much of a dare as he means it to be. There’s definitely something different about today, whether it’s the rest and the time away from the facility or how flat-out good he feels. All morning he’s been turning red on and off, knowing he looks guiltier than a kid with his hand in the candy jar. Sam, who’s in meetings with Fury and is hanging around to see how Bucky’s scans are after a week away, was the worst; all he had to do was tilt his head a fraction to the right and Steve nearly burst into flames. Sam hasn’t said anything about it since then, just gave them both little smug smiles, but Steve knows he’s an easy mark and also knows that Sam is going to draw this out as long as possible.

Bucky pokes him in the back before he moves into position behind him. When Natasha says _go_ , he holds off for a moment and Steve thinks Bucky must not be in the same place he is, where he feels like he might actually be able to spar without spiraling into panic, and there’s a flash of disappointment before Bucky’s suddenly on him. He drops and pulls Bucky over his shoulder and in a second Bucky’s on his feet again and grinning, cocky and teasing. _I can’t hurt you,_ Steve thinks with a burst of exultation, and goes after him.

Natasha lets them fight for nearly an hour and a half before she stops them. “We’re done for the morning,” she says. “Great job, Barnes.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Who won?”

“Winning isn’t the point,” she says, and gives him a small smile before she leaves. “But Steve cheats, so it’s obviously you.”

“You’re a sore loser, Romanoff,” Steve calls after her.

“And I can hold a grudge for decades,” she says without turning around.

Other people are starting to come in for their early morning workout. Gerard gives them a nod and Bucky returns it shortly. Steve is sure Bucky doesn’t really blame Gerard for getting him hurt, but he’s never going to make friends with anyone who landed Steve in the hospital. He almost wants to stay and spar with Gerard so he can make sure everything’s good, but the truth is he’s been about two seconds from kissing Bucky since they started and now that they’re done, he needs it so badly it’s about to get embarrassing.

“Let’s hit the showers,” Bucky says, and goes to guide him with a hand low on his back. Steve moans at the touch and Bucky turns to look at him – bright red, sweaty, biting his lip and crossing his arms over his chest. “Okay, yeah, let’s definitely do that.”

They door has barely swung shut behind them before Steve has Bucky by the shoulders and backs him up to the wall, nudging his legs apart so he can get in between them.

“You gonna fuck me right here?" Bucky drawls, sounding amused, but the way he sighs in pleasure when Steve kisses him says he needs it just as much as Steve does.

“I might,” Steve replies. Bucky slips one hand up under his shirt and begins to play with his nipples, slowly rubbing and pulling on them. He knows by now that it gets Steve going like nothing else, and within moments Steve’s pressed bonelessly against him, whimpering into Bucky’s neck as Bucky strokes his hair with one hand and tugs on his nipples with the other.

“I wanna make fun of you,” Bucky says, voice thick and low against Steve’s ear, “but I’m about to get on my knees and just – god, is this because we were sparring?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Steve moans happily.

“You don’t think that’s kinda weird?” Bucky asks, wiping his forehead. Steve rests his head on Bucky’s shoulder and presses his mouth against his damp skin, breathing him in and licking the sweat from his neck.

“I don’t care, I just like it,” Steve mumbles, sliding his hands over the back of Bucky’s soaking wet shirt, gripping his ass and squeezing. He can’t say he’s never gotten turned on after a good sparring session before, but he always thought it was just adrenaline. Now, with the soreness turning into warmth and the warmth turning into him rubbing against Bucky, he thinks he’s going to have to reevaluate exactly what it is that turns him on.

“I knew it,” Bucky gasps, tilting his head back and letting Steve kiss his neck. “I knew you liked getting hit. I always said it, didn’t I.”

Steve would blush if he weren’t so hot already. “I just like how strong you are,” he says. Bucky stiffens under him a little and he realizes he might have said the wrong thing. “I don’t have to hold back with you. I thought I did before, but I don’t.”

Bucky says, after a moment, “Is it the arm? You like the arm?”

“It’s part of you,” he says without thinking, and has to stop to make sure he treads carefully. “And I like everything about you, Buck. But how I feel doesn’t really matter. How do you feel about it?”

“It’s useful,” Bucky says. “At first I thought you’d find it strange or disgusting because it’s not, you know, the original model. Or maybe you’d associate it with the Winter Soldier. I don’t hate it. I guess it just _is_.”

“Do you,” he begins before reconsidering. He’s not good at this, but it’s important because Bucky has to know. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to continue. “I don’t want you to think I’m stuck on a version of you that doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not in denial or anything, I know you’ve changed. You just gotta know I like all of you.”

“What a sap you are,” Bucky says, looking up at Steve from under his lashes with a little half-smile on his face. “You like me being as strong as you, huh?”

He nods, flushing hot again. It never really goes away; he feels like he’s constantly on simmer, and all it takes is Bucky moving a certain way or looking at him and he’s gone again.

“You want to fight over who takes charge?” Bucky asks. Steve shakes his head and Bucky looks surprised. “No?”

“No, I want you to take me down,” he says in a rush. It gets him so much hotter to say it out loud, and he presses his hips into Bucky’s again with a groan. “Get really rough with me.”

Bucky laughs, hands skimming over Steve’s sides. “Oh yeah, you want a fight. But if you want me to take you down, that must mean you wanna _lose_.”

He’s flooded by a wave of embarrassment that turns quickly into heat, like the healing bruises on his ribs and back. He’s never thought about it like that before. All he knows is that struggling under Bucky’s weight, trying to break free and being unable to move him, makes him so hot he feels like he’s melting into a puddle at Bucky’s feet. “ _Yeah_ ,” he chokes out. He shudders, bracing himself on the wall, when Bucky’s hand slides into his sweatpants, fingers forming a tight ring around his cock and starting to stroke. He’s so close to losing it he can feel it curling his toes, and shoves up into Bucky’s hand hard and fast.

“Stay still,” Bucky says, teasing, his metal fingers closing tight over Steve’s hip to keep him in place, and Steve moans loud enough that it bounces off the tile. Bucky laughs and tightens his grip. “Everyone’s gonna hear you if you’re not careful.”

“Jesus _Christ_.” His voice breaks and he comes so hard and with such force that it spills all over Bucky’s hand and wrist, on his shirt, on the floor.

He’s wrung out after, shaking, and Bucky holds him up, wrapping one arm around his waist and guiding Steve’s head down onto his shoulder with his metal hand, stroking his hair. “I shoulda known,” he says, still laughing, kissing the side of Steve’s head. “Only you could look like a choir boy and be this bent, I swear to god.”

“Who’s bent?” he grumbles indignantly into Bucky’s shirt. “You’re like a damn corkscrew.”

“Do I need to ask Stark to build some special handcuffs for you to prove it?” Bucky asks, and Steve groans and tries to hide his flushed, embarrassed face while Bucky laughs at him.

*

In the back of his mind, he supposes he’s been wondering when the axe would fall. It happens faster than he might have thought. Only a couple of weeks after Bucky’s paperwork is sent up the chain, Steve comes into the living room, where Bucky has been putting together the entertainment center, and finds him staring out the window onto the street with his arms crossed over his chest. The entertainment center’s parts are laid out in neat piles on the floor, bolts and nails and particle board.

“Buck?” he asks, moving carefully and giving him a wide berth. He has goosebumps, suddenly, and rubs his arms.

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice is flat, and when he turns his head, it’s measured and cold in a way Steve remembers from nightmares. “What the fuck am I even doing here?”

“What do you mean?” He inches his fingers into his back pocket for his phone. It’s not that he’s planned for some kind of inevitable amnesia meltdown, but if he can text Natasha even a single letter she’ll understand he needs backup.

“I mean what the fuck am I doing pretending I’m some kinda good guy, Steve? Why are _you_ pretending?” Bucky’s face softens into terrible sadness for a second and Steve understands. Not amnesia. He’s not sure why he’s never realized before that some of the Winter Soldier’s movements and habits weren’t forced onto him. There was a boundary around what the Winter Soldier could be, and that boundary was Bucky himself. Only so much could be the result of training and brainwashing; some of it was bound to be bits and pieces of the shell itself.

“You are a good guy, Buck,” Steve says.

“I’m not. I’m _not_ ,” Bucky snaps, his voice rising like he’s on the verge of hysteria. “I’m not a good guy, and I wish you’d listen to me for once so you don’t have to figure it out for yourself later.”

“Don’t pull that with me.” He realizes his voice is rising too, and tries to rein in his temper. “Don’t you try to make it like I’m the one who can’t see you clearly when you know damn well it’s you.”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Steve.” Bucky hits the wall with the flat of his metal hand and the house’s entire foundation trembles. Steve freezes for a moment, waiting for something to fall apart, but there’s only a patter of rubble landing on the floor. Bucky looks stricken. The shadows under his eyes are bluish, like he hasn’t slept for days.

“Did something happen in the last half hour?” Steve asks when he’s certain the house won’t collapse. He realizes he’s holding his hands up in a placating motion and has to force them down. Bucky isn’t a feral animal.

“No. Maybe.” Bucky scrubs his hand over his face and turns back to staring out the window. “I was sitting there looking at the directions for the entertainment center and I thought _I should tell Steve we need to get a ball-peen hammer_ , and it’s just so – a year ago I couldn’t remember anything before 1976. Six months ago I was in Toronto chasing down some Hydra agent on the run and I was probably gonna kill him.”

Steve remembers, right after the Chitauri incident, going back to his depressing apartment and realizing he needed to change the light bulb in the bathroom. There was something so absurd about the little blinking fluorescent light above the sink that he broke out in a cold, nauseated sweat and left the apartment forever that night. “I think – it gets less strange,” he says. “I know your experiences aren’t the same and you’ve got a lot going on, triggers I don’t have, but after a while it’s easier to reconcile things, I guess.”

“There are no triggers left. It’s just me in here. Me and everything I did.” Bucky’s voice, which is usually far-off when he talks about what he remembers, is tight and shaky instead. “I keep dreaming about Nina. I’m watching it happen from the side street and she sees this guy who looks just like me, she runs toward him shouting my name and he’s got a gun in his hand and I try to yell at her to run away. And she knows there’s something wrong but she can’t hear me, all she can see is Bucky. And he drops her right there. Point blank. Middle of the street. That was my first kill. You remember how much she loved me? They knew that, they knew she was my favorite.”

Bucky’s shoulders have gone up like he’s about to fight and Steve steels himself for it just in case, but when he speaks again it’s clear he’s only about to cry. His words are halting and each one is half choked out. “I just keep asking myself what – what would my – God, Steve, what would my _mother_ think?” he gasps, and folds in on himself like even the thought of his mother is a bullet to the stomach.

Steve moves in to catch and hold onto him. It’s like Salzburg again, and he thinks how alike they are when it comes to the worst of things, how they always pull everything in tight until they hit a wall and then go to pieces. Bucky digs his fingers into Steve’s back and it hurts, but it hurts more when Steve hears what he’s saying, muffled into his shirt.

“Jesus, I can’t take it,” Bucky says frantically, rubbing his face against Steve’s shoulder. “She’d hate me, Steve, she’d _hate me_.” Steve chokes back his first appalled, almost angry response, because there’s nothing in the world that could have made the Winifred Barnes he remembers hate her son. But he also knows there’s nothing rational about this. There usually isn’t when it comes to parents, he thinks – after all, there’s a giant box of guilt in his mind that he tries never to open, full of the knowledge that he could have worked harder, gotten his mother more medicine, been a son who could make a better life for her.

“You gotta give her a little more credit,” he says, murmuring it softly against Bucky’s ear. “Anybody with common sense can see what happened to you wasn’t your fault. She’d be so sad, Buck, but proud of you for living through something nobody else could ever – ”

Bucky shakes his head the entire time Steve speaks. “No. No, I should have found a way to kill myself. I tried when I realized what they were doing, I tried and I couldn’t, they already had me.”

“They’d never have let you. You were too valuable.” He can’t help but tighten his arms around Bucky at the thought. “Buck, they had to burn your brain for years to get you to obey. And even if it took one day, even if it took a _minute_ for them to hurt you enough, that doesn’t change anything. You aren’t what they made you. She would know that.”

“I hate that you have faith in me like this,” Bucky says, his voice breaking over every other word because he keeps trying to talk through his shuddering breath. “It’s not fair. All those people are dead because of me and I get to be here, I get to be with you, I get to have all this and it’s not, god, it’s not _fair_. I shouldn’t have this when – you’ve seen all of them, all those people. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”

The beautiful weather Steve predicted during their morning run has come true: it’s brisk and bright outside, a leaf-picking day, a football day. The house is cold and only this spot, with Bucky’s body tight against him and the sun glinting off the metal of his arm, is warm. It’s the first time Bucky’s let him see even the smallest bit of what’s going on in his head and he knows he should be pleased that things are coming to the surface, but all he can think is that Bucky’s about to run and he needs to cling hard enough to make him stay. The urge to do it makes him seize up a little and he has to force his hands not to clench in Bucky’s clothes. He doesn’t want to live without Bucky again, but he can do it. He can do it if he has to.  

“Sam asked me when we first met what made me happy,” he says after a long while of stroking his hands over Bucky’s back and not holding him too tightly. “And you know, I’d never even thought about it. People in this time think about being happy a lot and I like that, I think it’s great that being happy is so important, but I don’t know – I didn’t know – how to answer because it seemed like a question for someone else. Someone who doesn’t do what I have to do. And after a while I thought, you know, that’s pretty arrogant. I’m not too good to want to be happy. I don’t need to be a martyr. Everyone deserves it and so do I. And so do you. If working with me, tracking down HYDRA, if that kinda stuff doesn’t make you feel like you’re building up something good to counteract all the bad, you don’t have to do it. We’ll find something else that does. But they took so much away from you, it seems like being happy and not suffering is spitting in their eye.”

“Dammit,” Bucky says thickly. “Don’t be nice to me right now. I can’t take it.”

“You’re an idiot,” Steve says, and Bucky laughs for a second before he lets his breath out on a jagged sigh. It makes him sound exhausted.

“Sorry,” he says. “Usually only Dr. Reznick sees this kinda thing.”

Steve frowns. “Do you feel like you have to hide it from me?”

“The better I get,” Bucky says into Steve’s neck, “the worse I get. I don’t want –”

“No,” Steve says, drawing him in tight again, far, far too tight. “Don’t be stupid, Bucky, jesus.”

“I can handle it, though.” He sounds so sure that Steve really believes him, and he’s surprised that maybe he didn’t think Bucky was doing as well as he is. “I can. I’m learning how to cope. I just don’t wanna talk about it that much because I don’t want…”

“Don’t want what?”

Bucky leans back, wipes his nose, and sighs. “If you knew how you look when you think I can’t see you, you’d understand.”

“Don’t treat me like I’m delicate,” Steve snaps. “I can handle it too. I want to. If it’s about helping you, I’m on board.”

“You should talk,” Bucky says. “Stark told me some stories about you.”

“You know you can’t listen to Tony,” Steve says. “All he knows is science and movie quotes.”

“He said you were a huge asshole and nobody even believed you knew how to smile,” Bucky continues as if he hasn’t spoken. “And that all this time you haven’t once ever asked them for help. Not once.”

God, he looks so good even when he’s been crying. Steve wonders if he’ll ever get used to Bucky’s face and thinks that after this long it’s probably never going to happen. He kisses the red tip of Bucky’s nose and his forehead and his cheek and his ear before Bucky pushes at him, laughing.

“Stop distracting me. I know when you’re messed up, pal,” Bucky says, patting Steve’s cheek. “And you don’t talk to me about it either.”

“When did this become about me?” Steve grumbles, but puts his hand over Bucky’s. “Maybe…maybe we could agree that we’ll try to tell each other more things.”

“I will.” Bucky sounds decisive. “I like it better when you fight with me than when you tiptoe around.”

“I’m just afraid you’re going to leave,” Steve admits without thinking, and waits for Bucky to freeze up again, but he only continues to pat Steve’s face gently.

“I’d never leave without my guy,” he says. “You know how bored I’d be without you getting into trouble all the time?”

Later that evening, Bucky’s finished putting together the entertainment center and they’re standing back, looking at it. “None of this stuff feels like it belongs to you,” he says. “Nothing but the bed, maybe the books.”

“I had a record player,” Steve says. “It got stolen, though. I guess I don’t really feel like my furniture is that important, except the bed.”

Bucky turns to look at him a little too keenly. “It all feels temporary. If someone came in and wrecked the place, you wouldn’t be losing anything you cared about.”

He shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest. “All the things I cared about are gone, or in a museum somewhere.”

“I’m not.” Bucky elbows him.

“Hey, counting the bed, that’s two antiques,” he says.

“I won’t be an antique until next year,” Bucky says. “Until then, I’m vintage, thank you very much.”

“Like a pretty dress,” Steve agrees.

“These jokes only work for people who aren’t ninety-eight,” Bucky says, but he’s already backing Steve up against the island and giving him what he really wants, the way he always does.

*

When he wakes up, Bucky is gone. He’s only a little alarmed at first when he realizes Bucky’s not in the house, but there are any number of perfectly reasonable places he could have gone: to get breakfast, to the hardware store, to get a new kitchen table since they broke the old one. Sometimes he wanders out and comes back with a book for Steve, or a vase full of flowers for the kitchen island. Who knows, Steve thinks, what goes on in Bucky’s head at five in the morning. But there’s a note on the remains of the table.

I’ll be gone for the day. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.

–JBB

His bike is gone, which means Bucky’s not in the city anywhere. “Oh, don’t _worry_ ,” Steve mutters to himself, eyes narrowed, kicking the side of the house and sending a shower of icicles down onto his head. “Don’t _worry_ he says, like he’s just going down to the market to get some bread.” _This is your own fault_ , he thinks. _You only know sneaky people. Even when you make friends with someone you think is normal, he turns out to be a secret mechanical bird pilot. Clearly the problem is you._

This does not comfort him, but after he’s slammed around the inside of the house for a while, he feels a little better and decides to start stripping the floors. They’ve split the living room up and put the furniture on one half while they fix up the other half, and the first few days they sanded by hand, sweating over it and racing each other and still not making much headway. Then Bucky suddenly stopped in the middle of what he was doing, wiped his forehead, and said, “It’s 2016. There’s got to be an easier way than this.” Within two hours he was mopping varnish remover into the wood and giving Steve self-satisfied smiles while Steve watched his ass and said nothing.

He gets into the rhythm of scraping after a while and it’s peaceful. Bucky likes to listen to music while he works, and Steve loves to hear him singing along under his breath, but the silence is good. Good until, around eight, after he’s been working steadily for a couple of hours, he hears Bucky’s voice in his ear.

“You must be awake by now,” he says, and Steve does not exactly throw the scraper across the room and fall on his ass, but if he did there’s no one around to prove it. He sticks a finger in his ear and discovers the tiny wireless receiver Tony gave him. The other part of it is clipped to the back of his collar.

“Did you seriously put this thing on me while I was sleeping?” he asks.

“Yeah, you were really knocked out.” Bucky sounds smug. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t worried about me.”

“Oh yeah, you know, I didn’t even notice you were gone and my bike was missing,” he says. “I’m totally relaxed, it’s like I’m at a spa.”

Bucky laughs, and Steve can’t help but smile at the sound of it.

“Where are you, anyway?” he asks.

“In D.C.,” Bucky says. “I’ll be back by tonight. And I’m not here for anything related to HYDRA, so don’t make that face.”

“What are you doing down there?”

“Top secret, can’t tell you,” Bucky says. “All right, gotta go. Don’t stay in the apartment worrying all day.”

He wasn’t going to, he thinks, and then realizes he definitely was. “See you tonight. Hey, wait – did you hack into Tony’s phone to call me?”

“Yeah, don’t tell him. He’d be really offended.”

He can’t stop smiling. Bucky sounds so good, so much like himself. “Bye Buck,” he says, and when the connection breaks he decides to stop scraping and go out into the city.

*

He gets home after Bucky does. He didn’t mean to, but after a run, lunch, a walk in the snow, and then a movie, he texted Sam and asked him if he wanted to go out for dinner, which turned into dinner and drinks. It doesn’t feel quite right to be out without Bucky, or to be anywhere having a good time and not worrying about him for stretches of up to fifteen minutes in a row, but right before he left Sam gripped his elbow and said, “It’s good to see you looking like this, man. Things are better, I can tell.”

“Hey, you’re home,” he says inanely when he walks through the door and Bucky’s at the island cutting up a tomato for a sandwich. Bucky drops everything and swoops in on him, kissing him so well it takes him a few moments to come back to reality.

“I got you some things to decorate the house with,” Bucky says, steering him into the living room. There’s a box on the rug that’s on the un-scraped side of the living room, and even before Bucky opens it he knows what he’s going to see.

“Buck, you didn’t,” he says, almost laughing, because of course Bucky did.

“It’s our stuff,” Bucky says mulishly. He pulls out a big stack of framed pictures and sets them on the rug. A baseball. A dirty, embroidered pillow. Dish towels. A thick bundle of letters, tied with a shoelace. Part of the desk set Bucky gave to him for his eighteenth birthday.

“Most of this stuff wasn’t on display in the museum,” Steve says, sitting beside the pictures and picking up one of the towels, running his fingers over the monogram his mother had sewn into them. No one would care about these but him. “How did you get ahold of it?”    

“I have my ways.” Bucky pulls the pictures closer and takes one from the middle. “This is what I was really looking for the whole time.”

There’s a starburst crack in the upper right corner of the glass covering the picture. Steve touches it gingerly and bites his lip. Bucky’s mother took the picture in the Barneses’ living room, he thinks. On the shelf behind them there’s a Santa that one of the girls crocheted, so it must have been December of 1938 or 1939. He can’t remember what he said that made Bucky laugh, but in the picture he’s bent over a little with a hand on his stomach like he’s been laughing so hard it hurts. Steve is standing beside him with his hands in his pockets, looking at him and half-smiling. It’s a strange, unguarded moment – his face is full of affection and so obvious.

“Anyone who’s ever seen this picture must have known how I felt about you,” he says. “Look at my face.”

“It was always my favorite,” Bucky says. “You seemed so happy that you made me happy.”

“Story of my life,” Steve says, and Bucky ducks his head, grinning. He brings out one last thing, a dented copper coffee cup, and Steve gives a happy cry. “My cup – god, I can’t believe someone kept that.”

“You and your damn cup,” Bucky says, tossing it to him. “Want me to make hot chocolate so you can drink out of it?”

He turns it upside down and watches the dust drift out of it, but clutches it close anyway. “Yes,” he says. “I don’t care if you were teasing, go make me some hot chocolate.”

Long after Bucky falls asleep that night, Steve stays awake with the bundle of letters. Most of them are from Bucky to him during training and then the war, but a few are from other people to Bucky, postcards and letters from various friends and relatives. There’s a Christmas card from someone mysteriously signed “Fenta, UPD,” which Steve puzzles over for about ten minutes. After a while Steve stops sorting through them and finally just reads the war letters, his hands shaking.

Bucky tried to be so positive, Steve thinks, and remembers reading the letters with such mingled jealousy and affection that he could barely breathe, thinking Bucky must be living real life while Steve was stuck on a stage in Akron, Ohio. He was too close and yet too far away, too removed from the reality of it, to see it before, but now that he reads them again he can see through the words to the despair and fear and shock. He wishes his replies had been less about wanting to be there and more about giving Bucky…he’s not sure what he could have given him. More of home, maybe. More of himself.

_I knew Europe wouldn’t be like it was in my head. I always thought of it the way it was in books but all the ones we read were set before the war. Remember when we used to dream about England bec_

There’s a smudgy fingerprint there, but Steve is pretty sure it says _because of the fairy cakes_. He remembers how they had sounded like magic to two little boys without enough food.

_If anybody ever made one now, they’d have to do it with sawdust. There’s nothing left to ration. Besides, it makes me laugh to imagine anyone having time to bake anything ever again. Everybody’s trying so hard. Makes me think of you & how you dig in & don’t stop until everything’s done. If you were here the war would be taken care of in a week. Hitler, meet Steve Rogers. We’re headed out tomorrow morning at the end of my watch, won’t know where we’re going until right before we leave, so I won’t be able to write for a while. What I wouldn’t give for a night in a bed, my bed, & you reading to me. I’d trade my socks for that, & I’ll have you know these are the best socks in the entire battalion. I think the colonel is jealous of them & that’s why I’m always on night watch. _

_I can practically feel those blankets right now. No wool. Doesn’t matter which book as long as you’re reading it. Give me my bed & my book & you not coughing all over everything & I’ll never ask for another thing in my life. Well, just one thing: please send more socks for everyone so I can get a good night’s sleep. Your boy, Bucky._

Steve looks at the Bucky beside him, the soft line of his sleeping face and his chest rising and falling. It hurts him to think of that bright sweet kid who just wanted to be home. God, that dumb, wonderful kid who never got there because he loved Steve.

The guilt is threatening to take over again and he can barely stop himself from rolling over and getting out of bed. He wants a mission again, suddenly, a long mission he can bury himself in so he has no time or energy to think about anything. It’s always seemed so much smarter to get up and do something than to stop and think about how he feels. He should text Sam, see when they leave, start planning. He’s about to swing his legs out of the bed to go get his phone when Bucky stirs.

“You’re still awake,” he says, a little croaky and confused. He reaches for Steve and his hand crumples the letter. Picking it up, he gives it a cursory glance and looks up at Steve again. “What are you thinking about?”

And Steve promised Bucky he’d start talking about things, so he doesn’t give into the impulse to say _nothing_ and kiss him until the letter is forgotten. He sits up, twisting his hands together. “Guilty,” he says. “Feeling guilty.”

Bucky stretches and Steve thinks maybe he wants to be kissed into forgetfulness as well, maybe they don’t have to talk about anything. But then he gives a pleased little sigh with his toes wiggling under the sheets and says, “You saved me in more than one way after Azzano.”

Steve huffs, and Bucky turns to his side and watches him lazily.

“You did, though. Even if I’d survived without you coming to get me, do you think I coulda just gone back home? If you hadn’t kept me for the mission, they’d have sent me back to the States and I’da gone crazy thinking about the rest of the guys fighting without me, getting hurt, dying. I was so busted up, I remember I thought if they sent me away from you I was gonna just dissolve. I felt like I was disappearing.” He picks up the letter and moves it out of the way, to his bedside table. “These letters, maybe you can’t see it but I missed you so goddamn much. I used to dream about you showing up, like I thought everything was gonna be better if Steve was there. And it was.”

Steve opens his mouth but stops when Bucky puts a hand on his leg and says, “Come on, you need to get out of your head a little while.”

There’s a sharp contrast, like a hot shower after a run in the cold rain, between the softness of Bucky’s mouth and the way his hands hold Steve’s wrists down to the bed. He says gently _no, no_ , when Steve struggles up against it, and pushes him down that much harder, and when Steve won’t stop writhing under him, because it feels good, Bucky flips him over. Steve’s hands go out to brace himself but Bucky’s faster, snagging both his wrists and pulling them up behind him one at a time. He pins them there at the base of Steve’s back, holding him in place so tightly he can’t even twist against the bed.

“Too much?” Bucky asks, and Steve shakes his head, breathing hard into the pillow. “Good. Let’s get you up on your knees so I can make you feel good.”

“Oh god,” Steve moans. He’s trying not to shake, but once he’s up on his knees he imagines what he must look like, with his face down and his ass up, and he makes a very embarrassing sobbing noise into the pillow. Bucky keeps him in place with the metal hand, and with the other he opens Steve up so slow and thorough that Steve’s thighs are trembling and he’s pushing back onto Bucky’s fingers as hard as he can.

“Stay _still_ ,” Bucky says, patient to the last, but Steve can’t stop moving. “Do I have to make you?”

He nods frantically, and in a moment he can feel Bucky’s cock against him, almost in him, almost, before he slides inside and holds Steve there, unable to move forward or back.

“Bucky, come _on_ ,” he says, and maybe it’s a little impatient but he’s been waiting forever.

“God, you’re so damn bossy,” Bucky says, laughing breathlessly. “I’m not going anywhere, dummy. My dick is in you.”

“Jesus,” he hisses, going hot – hotter. His embarrassment seems to be wired to his cock.

“You need it, don’t you?” Bucky asks. Steve can tell without even looking over his shoulder that he’s smirking a little bit, but he sounds surprised.

“ _No_ ,” he says, and it sounds like _yes_ , because he does.

Bucky laughs again and tightens his fingers around Steve’s wrists, sliding out and then into him again, so sweet it makes Steve whine open-mouthed against the pillow. “Tell me you don’t need it.”

He’s so mortified he doesn’t think he’ll stop blushing for the rest of his life, but it’s winding him up so hard he can’t think of anything but how good it feels and how much he loves it, and when Bucky starts to move, _finally_ , Steve loses everything but his name. “Bucky. Bucky. Buck, god, _Bucky_ ,” he moans, feeling like maybe he’s going to fall apart and it’ll be okay as long as Bucky’s right there with him.

“It’s all right, I’m right here,” Bucky says, stroking a finger softly over his wrist. Of course he knows what Steve needs; this is Bucky, after all. Who could ever know him better? Abruptly he imagines his friends, his colleagues, seeing him like this, his face in the pillows and his ass in the air, arms held behind his back, getting…getting fucked. The shock of embarrassment sweeps through him and he chokes on it before it gets him even hotter and he feels that telltale beat spreading between his legs that means he’s about to come. Every time Bucky slides into him his cock drips a little more onto the sheets, and the pillow is wet under his face and he’s just – his control is disappearing so rapidly, the panic and pleasure and the throb of shame at being held in place, at _wanting_ to be held in place, are all drawing together and he can’t stop whimpering and it’s all so damn _embarrassing_ , he feels like he’s completely undone before Bucky and he doesn’t know how to stop and he doesn’t want to stop, ever.

“Let go, you can do it,” Bucky says. His voice is thick, a little shaky. “I want to see it, you’re so – god, you’re so – ”

And with that he twists his hips and drives against the spot he’s just been brushing over, hot pressure in a brilliant slide of pleasure, again and again, and Steve absolutely loses it. Whatever noise he makes is muffled into the pillow until Bucky lets go of his wrists and grips Steve’s hips hard and holds him still, and he comes instantly, like all he needed was for Bucky’s hands to give him permission. It hits him so strong that for a moment he doesn’t have the breath or wherewithal to make any noise at all, and then it rushes in and he’s moaning so loud and so long that he feels Bucky’s palm on his lower back, soothing him.

Later, he falls asleep wrapped tight around Bucky, warm even in the chill of the drafty house.

*

“The paperwork is all in,” Sam says the next day when they meet in one of the offices on the first floor of the facility. “I have no idea who approves these things now that the entire SHIELD chain of command is dead, in jail, or unemployed, but Fury said it will go somewhere.”

“Bureaucracy is magic,” Tony says. He claims he’s there to mess around with the underground filtration, although Steve strongly suspects his ultimate goal is to ask Bucky how his arm works during sex. He hasn’t done it yet, but from the look on his face it’s going to happen soon. “Actually, I think requests go to me now. I technically own – well, everything. Which, by the way, Ms. Rushman, means I’m your boss again.”

“I think we all know it’s still Pepper,” Natasha says.

“We do,” Tony says.

“So when do we start planning?” Steve asks. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

“We should start now. Clint and Tony and Banner and I have been working on logistics,” Natasha says. “Clint’s finalizing contacts in the Ukraine and then we’ll have a good working schedule.”

“Has everyone been working on this?” Steve asks. “I thought that was just me and Sam and Bucky.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing this entire time?” Tony asks. “I haven’t _just_ been running a business, rebuilding a government outfit, and apologizing profusely and expensively for almost destroying the planet.”

Steve watches Tony work on his tablet, talk to Natasha, and gradually inch toward Bucky while Bucky looks over maps on the 3D table with Sam, and realizes – they're all here for him, they've been coming and going this entire time to help him. He wouldn't ever really have said, before this, that they were close. They fight together like a group of alley cats teaming up against a dog, too wary to stay together when the fight's over. But they've each helped in their own way.  
  
"Thanks," he says, and he knows Tony understands and that Natasha’s listening even though she’s pretending not to.  
  
"Yeah, well, we're just – trying to get things up to fighting speed again," Tony says. "There's a lot of good stuff left now that HYDRA's not running the show. And you know, not to get too sentimental or anything, but you don’t have to do everything yourself.”  
  
Bucky looks up and catches his eye, motioning him over.

“You’re right, I don’t,” he says, and the five of them gather around the table to start planning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And look at that, it's finished a mere nine months after I started it. Thank you to the people who kept reading even though it probably seemed like that ? was going to be there forever!

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest, when I think about Captain America all I can do is mumble "booty booty booty," but somehow this ended up being kind of serious. Each chapter is titled after a stage of PTSD recovery (emergency, numbing, intrusion, transition, integration). The title comes from [I'll Get By (As Long As I Have You)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsPn4y3_M-k).


End file.
